Pathways to happiness: From personality to social networks and perceived support

• We aim to incorporate personality into social network theory and research.
• We model the path from personality to wellbeing via networks and social support (PSS).
• PSS fully mediates the positive association between social networks and wellbeing.
• Network size links extraversion and agreeableness to PSS and wellbeing.
• Proportion of new contacts links extraversion, openness to PSS and wellbeing.

The present study attempts to incorporate individual personality into a social network account of subjective wellbeing (SWB) by proposing and testing a path model in which social relationships (egocentric social networks and perceived social support, PSS) mediate the relationship between personality and SWB. We found that network characteristics (including network size, emotional closeness, and proportion of new contacts) are related to SWB largely via the mediation of PSS. Additionally, network size and proportion of new contacts function as important mediating mechanisms linking extraversion, agreeableness and openness to PSS and SWB.