Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto University.
Department of Psychology and Logopedics, University of Helsinki.
Psychol Aging. 2024 Sep;39(6):589-598. doi: 10.1037/pag0000802. Epub 2024 Feb 15.
Life satisfaction and purpose in life are fundamental yet separate ways to evaluate one's life. Both positively predict physical health and longevity, making them key factors for length and quality of life. However, we do not know which of them predicts mortality, when controlling for the influence of each other. Given that purpose in life involves a more active engagement with life and can help to cope with suffering, we hypothesize that purpose in life could be a more direct prospective predictor of longevity, overshadowing any effect of life satisfaction, when the two are pitted against each other as prospective predictors of longevity. To examine these hypotheses, we utilized Midlife in the U.S. survey, which is a 23-year follow-up study, ( = 5,993) and Cox proportional hazards models, repeating the analyses both without covariates and when controlling for various demographic and health-related variables. We show that both life satisfaction and purpose in life predict mortality when modeled separately. When life satisfaction, purpose in life and self-rated health were entered as simultaneous predictors of mortality, purpose in life remained a slightly more robust predictor of mortality, while life satisfaction became only marginally significant, suggesting that some of the factors that connect it to mortality are covered by the other two subjective evaluations. Overall, the results demonstrate that purpose in life is a robust predictor of mortality, and thus a key dimension of well-being to attend to as people age, while the predictive power of life satisfaction is more dependent on the choice of covariates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
生活满意度和生活目的是评估人生的两种基本且独立的方式。两者都能积极预测身体健康和长寿，是影响生命长度和质量的关键因素。然而，当控制彼此的影响时，我们并不知道它们中的哪一个可以预测死亡率。鉴于生活目的涉及更积极地参与生活，并有助于应对苦难，我们假设，当生活满意度和生活目的作为长寿的前瞻性预测因素相互竞争时，生活目的可能是长寿的更直接的前瞻性预测因素，超过生活满意度的任何影响。为了检验这些假设，我们利用了美国中年研究，这是一项为期 23 年的随访研究（n=5993），并使用 Cox 比例风险模型，在没有协变量和控制各种人口统计学和健康相关变量的情况下重复分析。我们表明，当分别建模时，生活满意度和生活目的都可以预测死亡率。当生活满意度、生活目的和自我评估健康作为死亡率的同时预测因素时，生活目的仍然是死亡率更稳健的预测因素，而生活满意度则变得仅略微显著，这表明将其与死亡率联系起来的一些因素被其他两个主观评估所涵盖。总的来说，这些结果表明，生活目的是死亡率的一个强有力的预测因素，因此，随着人们年龄的增长，它是幸福感的一个关键维度，需要关注，而生活满意度的预测能力则更依赖于协变量的选择。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2024 APA，保留所有权利）。
