A good life is a personal life: Relationship fulfillment and work fulfillment in judgments of life quality

Three studies examined folk concepts of the good life in samples of college students and community adults. An experimental design varied a target's sex, work fulfillment (WF), and relationship fulfillment (RF). RF had the strongest effect on both judgments of life desirability and the person's moral goodness. WF was a significant but weaker influence. Targets with high RF were judged as more likely to go to heaven, whereas WF had no effect on this judgment. There was no effect for target gender. In Study 3, individual differences in intrinsic motivation in the relationship and work domains interacted with target fulfillment to predict desirability and moral goodness judgments. Overall, the results indicate that a good life must include fulfilling personal relationships; WF is a plus but seemingly not essential.