The longitudinal interplay between personal values and subjective well-being: A registered report

A large body of cross-sectional research on personal values and subjective well-being has inspired theories of the interplay between personal values and subjective well-being. In this registered report, we investigated which of these theories fit best with the longitudinal associations between values and cognitive and affective subjective well-being. We hypothesized that openness-to-change values have a causal effect on subjective well-being and that subjective well-being, in turn, has a causal effect on openness-to-change values. We analyzed 12 waves of a German panel study (N = 9,723) with random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM). Partly consistent with our hypotheses, all four six-month cross-lagged effects and one of four 18-month cross-lagged effects from openness-to-change values to subjective well-being and vice versa were statistically significant. Neither openness-to-change values nor subjective well-being appeared to be causally predominant over the other. Additional exploratory analyses yielded little evidence for cross-lagged effects from conservation, self-transcendence, and self-enhancement to subjective well-being or vice versa. Overall, our findings are compatible with theorized bidirectional influences between openness-to-change values and subjective well-being. Time-varying confounders might provide an alternative explanation for the cross-lagged associations that we could not rule out. We conclude with directions for further theory-driven research on the values–subjective well-being interface.