Cross-temporal meta-analyses on Chinese college students’ big five traits and subjective well-being during 2001 - 2016

The past decades have witnessed the greatest economy growth and social transforms in China, which have brought about radical changes in nearly every way of people’s lives. From the psychological perspective, these changes might have also altered the inner state of individuals, such as shaping their personality generation by generation, or influencing their subjective well-being inconspicuously. In this study we investigated the birth cohort change on big five personality traits among Chinese college students during 2001-2016, and found positive trend of four out of five traits with year, moderated by GDP growth rate of each province. Study 2 focused on a similar meta-analysis on subjective well-being, and found positive changing trend of satisfaction with life and positive affect, which was moderated by subjective socioeconomic status change. Negative affect did not change obviously during the period. Finally, time-lagged correlations showed that personality traits served as antecedent predictors of well-being, instead of the other way around.