Life Satisfaction, Affect, and Belonging in Older Adults

Prior research has identified the need for a greater understanding of the individual utility of independent subjective well-being factors. This article explores the effect of positive affect, negative affect, and feelings of belonging on life satisfaction among older adults in the United States. Ordinal regression analysis identified that positive affect demonstrated more predictive power in predictive overall life satisfaction than negative affect or feeling of belonging. Correlations were found between life satisfaction and positive affect, negative affect, and feeling of belonging. These findings indicate that interventions aimed to increase quality of life among older adults can improve life satisfaction, while still providing secondary benefits in decreasing negative affect and increasing feelings of belonging. This research suggests that applied quality of life studies to improve lives of seniors focus on interventions that increase positive affect. Where interventions have not yet been measured, this study suggests that measuring changes in participant positive affect could be simple method of identifying the potential for a program's utility in increasing life satisfaction.