Examining sources of self-informant agreement in life-satisfaction judgments

This study examined sources of self-informant agreement in life-satisfaction judgments. Pairs of participants (92 dating couples, 145 friendship pairs) provided self-ratings and informant ratings of life-satisfaction and domain satisfaction in five domains (family, health, academics, friends, and weather). Key findings were (a) significant self-informant agreement for life-satisfaction and all five domain satisfaction ratings, (b) significantly higher agreement for domain satisfaction than for life-satisfaction judgments, (c) discriminant validity of domain satisfaction judgments, (d) a top-down effect of general satisfaction on domain satisfaction, and (e) self-informant agreement in life-satisfaction judgments was fully explained by bottom-up effects of family satisfaction, health satisfaction, and academic satisfaction on self-ratings and informant ratings of life-satisfaction.