Value Fulfillment from a Cybernetic Perspective: A New Psychological Theory of Well-Being.

Value Fulfillment Theory (VFT) is a philosophical theory of well-being. Cybernetic Big Five Theory (CB5T) is a psychological theory of personality. Both start with a conception of the person as a goal-seeking (or value-pursuing) organism, and both take goals and the psychological integration of goals to be key to well-being. By joining VFT and CB5T, we produce a cybernetic value fulfillment theory in which we argue that well-being is best conceived as the fulfillment of psychologically integrated values. Well-being is the effective pursuit of a set of nonconflicting values that are emotionally, motivationally, and cognitively suitable to the person. The primary difference in our theory from other psychological theories of well-being is that it does not provide a list of intrinsic goods, instead emphasizing that each person may have their own list of intrinsic goods. We discuss the implications of our theory for measuring, researching, and improving well-being.

Stability and well-being: Associations among the Big Five domains, metatraits, and three kinds of well-being in a large sample.

OBJECTIVE: The present study estimates associations of the Big Five domains and their metatraits with individual indicators of eudaimonic, hedonic, and social well-being, as well as broader factors that capture the tendency for these individual indicators to correlate. METHOD: Using data from a large sample of adults from the United States, confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling was used to verify the factor structure of Big Five personality and well-being in adulthood. The factor structure of the Big Five domains and well-being was carried forward to estimate associations between personality and well-being at each of three assessments and different levels of analysis using structural equation modeling. RESULTS: Associations between the Big Five metatraits and well-being were strong and consistent across the three measurements when the average ages of participants were 46, 54, and 63 years. Similar results were observed whether focused on a fine-grained or broad level of analysis. CONCLUSIONS: For all types of well-being, the metatraits accounted for more variance than the Big Five domains, even when the Big Five were operationalized using latent factors, emphasizing the importance of considering this level of analysis when elucidating relations between personality and well-being.

Children's Judgments of Epistemic and Moral Agents: From Situations to Intentions.

Children's evaluations of moral and epistemic agents crucially depend on their discerning that an agent's actions were performed intentionally. Here we argue that children's epistemic and moral judgments reveal practices of forgiveness and blame, trust and mistrust, and objection or disapproval and that such practices are supported by children's monitoring of the situational constraints on agents. Inherent in such practices is the understanding that agents are responsible for actions performed under certain conditions but not others. We discuss a range of situational constraints on children's early epistemic and moral evaluations and clarify how these situational constraints serve to support children's identification of intentional actions. By monitoring the situation, children distinguish intentional from less intentional action and selectively hold epistemic and moral agents accountable. We argue that these findings inform psychological and philosophical theorizing about attributions of moral and epistemic agency and responsibility.

Social-relational exposures and well-being: Using multivariate twin data to rule-out heritable and shared environmental confounds.

The aims of the present study were as follows: (1) Using a large sample of adults, estimate overlap between social-relational exposures measured at midlife and well-being measured at midlife and approximately 9-years later. (2) Using a subsample of twins, test for heritable variation in social-relational exposures, and (3) controlling for heritable and shared environmental variation, estimate overlap between social-relational exposures and well-being, both concurrently and approximately 9-years later. Results indicated small-to-moderate overlap between exposures and well-being (mean r = .29, range = .05 to .54). There was also evidence for heritable variation in exposures, and after accounting for these genetic factors, the degree of overlap between social-relational exposures and well-being decreased (mean r = .09, range = -.07 to .33).

Cultivating character: the art of living.

Nearly everyone agrees that knowledge is gained through diligent study and investigation, but there is far greater ambiguity when it comes to the meaning of wisdom and how it is acquired. What is wisdom, and how can it be attained? Is there an empirical relationship between wisdom and the cultivation of character, as Aristotle and others have argued? Are the development of virtue and the fulfillment of our innate potential prerequisites to living the good life? Steven Paulson, moderator and executive producer of To the Best of our Knowledge, led a discussion with philosopher Philip Kitcher, philosopher Valerie Tiberius, and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett on role of wisdom in the interplay between positive emotions, virtues, and character.