Previous studies have showed that self-reported health, basic psychological needs satisfaction and life satisfaction are all heritable, and that both self-reported health and basic psychological needs satisfaction are positively associated with life satisfaction. However, genetic and environmental contributions to their associations have not yet been investigated. The aim of this study was to examine the heritability of self-reported health, basic psychological needs satisfaction and life satisfaction as well as their phenotypic, genetic and environmental associations in a sample of Croatian twins. A total of 337 twin pairs, 100 monozygotic (MZ) and 237 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs (85 male pairs, 139 female pairs, 113 opposite-sex pairs, Mage = 18.63, SDage = 2.31) participated in the study. They filled in Satisfaction with Life Scale, Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction Scale and a single item assessing self-reported health. As in previous studies, self-reported health, basic psychological needs satisfaction and life satisfaction were all heritable (41-74 %). Using Cholesky decomposition, significant genetic and environmental overlap was found between self-reported health, basic psychological needs satisfaction and life satisfaction, with 58 % of the genetic and 19 % of the environmental influences to individual differences in life satisfaction shared with self-reported health and basic psychological needs satisfaction.

Psycholexical studies explore the intricate interplay between language and personality traits, focusing on trait representation in language. One aspect of such representation is the frequency of personality adjective usage. This study examines how linguistic and trait-label properties of personality adjectives relate to their usage frequency. Utilizing a corpus from the social media platform Reddit, we employ natural language processing to analyze Big Five adjectives in person-descriptions. Our results show that trait-label properties exhibit different patterns when considered together rather than separately from linguistic properties-for instance, prefixal composition nullifies the expected effect of polarity on frequency. These findings highlight the importance of considering both linguistic and trait-label properties when assessing the usage of personality adjectives.

The differentiation of personality by intelligence hypothesis, which has mixed support in the literature, predicts that personality is more variable for more intelligent individuals. This study aimed to test that hypothesis by comparing variances, reliability coefficients, and inter-scale correlations of personality as assessed by self-reports between groups of participants with different intelligence scores. We used two independent datasets (N1 = 655; N2 = 836; Ntotal = 1491) in which the same vocabulary test was used as a measure of verbal intelligence, but personality was measured as self-report by different inventories (NEO-FFI and HEXACO-100). As the verbal ability scores had a normal distribution, the combined mean was calculated, and empirical groups were generated within each sample to compare groups of participants who indicated a low-ability group (G1) and the high-ability group (G3). Results mostly support the differentiation hypothesis in the NEO-FFI dataset, where participants in G3 have higher variances and reliability coefficients than participants in G1, but do not show lower inter-scale correlation coefficients. However, the same trend was not found in the second sample where personality was assessed by the HEXACO inventory. In conclusion, the results of this study provide only partial support for the personality differentiation by intelligence hypothesis.

Most Five-Factor Model (FFM) questionnaire items contain unique variance that is partly heritable, stable, and consensually observable, demonstrates consistent associations with age and sex, and predicts life outcomes beyond higher order factors. Extending these findings to the HEXACO model, we meta-analyzed single-item cross-rater agreement, heritability, and 2-year stability using samples from six countries. We analyzed raw item scores and their residual variance and adjusted the estimates for measurement unreliability. The median cross-rater agreement, heritability, and stability estimates were, respectively, .30, .30, and .57, for raw items and .10, .16, and .39, for item residuals. Adjusted for reliability, the respective medians were .46 and .25 for cross-rater agreement, .46 and .39 for heritability, and .87 and .94 for stability. These results are strikingly consistent with FFM-based findings, providing nondismissible evidence that single items index a partly unique level of the trait hierarchy—personality nuances—with trait properties comparable to those of higher-order traits.

Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question-the focus of the present study-is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neutral valence and increases with both positive and negative valence: a symmetric V-shaped relationship. In the study reported here of self-reported affect during a remembered moment (N = 8,590), we tested the valence-arousal relationship in 33 societies with 25 different languages. The two most common hypotheses in the literature-independence and a symmetric V-shaped relationship-were not supported. With data of all samples pooled, arousal increased with positive but not negative valence. Valence accounted for between 5% (Finland) and 43% (China Beijing) of the variance in arousal. Although there is evidence for a structural relationship between the two, there is also a large amount of variability in this relation.

Subjective well-being is a good indicator of the individual's psychological health. High levels of subjective well-being have been found in adolescents who are regularly physically active, less prone to negative emotions, more easily able to cope with life's problems and challenges, have a lower body mass index, and exhibit higher levels of life satisfaction. The participants in this research were adolescents from the Republic of Croatia, N = 756, of which 407 (53.8%) were handball players and 349 (46.2%) were adolescents from the control group not physically active. The research was conducted in elementary schools and handball clubs with adolescents in 2006 and 2007. Instruments used in this research are Life Satisfaction Scale and PANAS. Adolescent handball players are more satisfied with life, they express higher levels of positive affect and lower levels of negative affect compared to adolescents who are not involved in some form of kinesiology activities.

Self-determination theory postulates that three basic psychological needs - need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness - drive our motivation. However, little is known about the sources of individual differences in basic psychological needs, and about its shared etiology with personality. Self-report data on basic psychological needs and five-factor personality traits were collected in a sample of 668 Croatian twins. Results indicate substantial heritability of basic psychological needs, while environmental influences were non-shared by family members. Three psychological needs substantially correlated with extraversion and neuroticism, and some need- specific overlaps were found with conscientiousness, openness, and agreeableness. Phenotypic overlap of the basic psychological needs with personality was mainly due to the common genetic effects, while their environmental influences were largely independent.

The aim of this meta-analysis was to systematize available empirical findings in the field of basic psychological needs and personality traits overlap. Study eligibility criteria were: three basic psychological needs defined within Self-Determination Theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness), Five-factor model/Big Five model of personality traits, self-reported data, essential statistical indicators, and independent samples. The final sample included 16 primary studies, 17 independent samples, with 206 independent effect sizes representing more than 10 500 participants. Fifteen independent meta-analysis were performed resulting in 15 statistically significant, small to moderate in size, correlation coefficients between needs and traits. All three needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) had negative correlations with neuroticism, and positive correlations with extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Multiple publication bias indicators left this conclusion unaltered. Due to a relatively small number of primary studies, additional moderator analyses were not performed even though a large amount of heterogeneity was identified. This study is the first to empirically summarize and calculate the existing overlap between constructs from two theoretical perspectives of individual differences.

Research in sport and exercise psychology indicates that motivational factors contribute to exceptional achievement, both in individual and team sports. Therefore, analysing differences between junior and senior athletes in contact ball sports in terms of their motivational differences may be an important information source for the selection process and management of the development of the elite athletes. In this study data on athletes' motivation was collected via self-assessments. Data was analysed in order to answer the questions regarding the motivational differences of athletes, which might be related to the type of collective ball sport and their competing level related to age. Sample consisted of 316 athletes at junior and 286 athletes at senior level, which were active in one of the three team sports: football, handball, and water polo. They filled in three self-report questionnaires: Self-motivation Inventory - SMI; Sport Attitudes Inventory - SAI; and Task and ego orientation in sport questionnaire - TEOSQ. Results suggest that senior athletes have higher score on self-motivation, motive to achieve power and task goal orientation scales than junior athletes. These findings were replicated in all three sports which were analysed. Besides that, football players have the highest motive to achieve success, motive to achieve power and task goal orientation; water polo players have the most pronounced self-motivation, while handball players show lowest levels of these motives.

Subjektivna dobrobit često je ispitivan konstrukt u psihološkim istraživanjima, a njegova popularnost sve više raste tijekom posljednjih tridesetak godina. Definira se kao spoj kognitivne evaluacije života i afektivnih tendencija. Međutim, u literaturi postoje određene nekonzistentnosti i razlike u njezinoj operacionalizaciji koje će se opisati u ovome radu. Nakon upoznavanja s konstruktom ovaj pregledni rad fokusirat će se na dva osnovna cilja. Za početak, predstavit će se dosadašnja saznanja o izvorima individualnih razlika u subjektivnoj dobrobiti na temelju istraživanja koja su koristila bihevioralno-genetičku metodologiju. Rezultati tih studija upućuju na umjerenu heritabilnost subjektivne dobrobiti koja se kreće u rasponu od 30 do 40 %. Glavni fokus zatim će biti na prikazivanju povezanosti subjektivne dobrobiti s osobinama ličnosti. Prvo će se predstaviti nalazi istraživanja na razini fenotipske povezanosti koji ukazuju na snažnu povezanost subjektivne dobrobiti s neuroticizmom, ekstraverzijom te u nešto manjoj mjeri sa savjesnošću. Te fenotipske korelacije u konačnici će se protumačiti iz bihevioralno-genetičke perspektive, odnosno prikazom nalaza istraživanja koja su se bavila ispitivanjem etiologije koja stoji u podlozi navedenih korelacija. Istraživanja jasno upućuju na preklapanje genske varijance između subjektivne dobrobiti i osobina ličnosti, a upitnim ostaje postoji li genski efekt subjektivne dobrobiti koji je nezavisan od ličnosti.

Decades of research have shown that about half of individual differences in personality traits is heritable. Recent studies have reported that heritability is not fixed, but instead decreases across the life span. However, findings are inconsistent and it is yet unclear whether these trends are because of a waning importance of heritable tendencies, attributable to cumulative experiential influences with age, or because of nonlinear patterns suggesting Gene x Environment interplay. We combined four twin samples (N = 7,026) from Croatia, Finland, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and we examined age trends in genetic and environmental variance in the six HEXACO personality traits: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. The cross-national sample ranges in age from 14 to 90 years, allowing analyses of linear and nonlinear age differences in genetic and environmental components of trait variance, after controlling for gender and national differences. The amount of genetic variance in Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness followed a reversed U-shaped pattern across age, showed a declining trend for Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness, and was stable for Emotionality. For most traits, findings provided evidence for an increasing relative importance of life experiences contributing to personality differences across the life span. The findings are discussed against the background of Gene x Environment transactions and interactions.

Subjective well-being is a construct that was examined within numerous psychological research and its popularity has been growing over the last thirty years. It is defined as a combination of cognitive evaluation of one's life and affective tendencies. However, there are certain inconsistencies and differences in its operationalization in the literature, which will be discussed in this paper. After presenting the definition of subjective well-being, this paper will focus on two main goals. First will be presented findings about the sources of individual differences in subjective well-being, based on the studies that used a behavioural genetic methodology. Results of those studies suggest a moderate heritability of subjective well-being, ranging from 30-40%. Secondly, the main aim is to report the findings of the associations between subjective well-being and personality traits. Numerous studies indicate a strong phenotypic association of subjective well-being with neuroticism, extraversion, and, to a lesser extent, with conscientiousness. Finally, these phenotypic correlations will additionally be interpreted from a behavioural genetic perspective, i.e., with the presentation of studies that have examined the aetiology of these correlations. Namely, different studies showed that subjective well-being and personality share genetic variance but it is not yet clear whether there is a genetic effect of subjective well-being that is independent of personality.

Subjektivna dobrobit često je ispitivan konstrukt u psihološkim istraživanjima, a njegova popularnost sve više raste tijekom posljednjih tridesetak godina. Definira se kao spoj kognitivne evaluacije života i afektivnih tendencija. Međutim, u literaturi postoje određene nekonzistentnosti i razlike u njezinoj operacionalizaciji koje će se opisati u ovome radu. Nakon upoznavanja s konstruktom ovaj pregledni rad fokusirat će se na dva osnovna cilja. Za početak, predstavit će se dosadašnja saznanja o izvorima individualnih razlika u subjektivnoj dobrobiti na temelju istraživanja koja su koristila bihevioralno-genetičku metodologiju. Rezultati tih studija upućuju na umjerenu heritabilnost subjektivne dobrobiti koja se kreće u rasponu od 30 do 40 %. Glavni fokus zatim će biti na prikazivanju povezanosti subjektivne dobrobiti s osobinama ličnosti. Prvo će se predstaviti nalazi istraživanja na razini fenotipske povezanosti koji ukazuju na snažnu povezanost subjektivne dobrobiti s neuroticizmom, ekstraverzijom te u nešto manjoj mjeri sa savjesnošću. Te fenotipske korelacije u konačnici će se protumačiti iz bihevioralno-genetičke perspektive, odnosno prikazom nalaza istraživanja koja su se bavila ispitivanjem etiologije koja stoji u podlozi navedenih korelacija. Istraživanja jasno upućuju na preklapanje genske varijance između subjektivne dobrobiti i osobina ličnosti, a upitnim ostaje postoji li genski efekt subjektivne dobrobiti koji je nezavisan od ličnosti.

Social dominance orientation (SDO), i.e. the preference toward egalitarian or hierarchically arranged relations within a society may be studied from social/contextual, but also dispositional perspective. The aim of the present study was to explore genetic and environmental contribution to the individual differences in SDO, and its overlap with HEXACO personality traits, both at phenotypic and latent genetic and environmental levels. The sample consisted of 830 Croatian twins aged 19 to 28 years who filled-in the self-report measures. Data analyses indicated the heritability of SDO was over 40%, with no evidence for the common environmental influences. SDO phenotypic variance substantially overlapped with Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Openness domains. Numerous significant correlations were found at the facet level, with the highest phenotypic overlap for the “interstitial” altruism facet. However, incremental predictive power of personality (over age and sex) was moderate: 13% and 19% of the phenotypic SDO variance was predicted by HEXACO traits at the domains and facet levels, respectively. Multivariate behavioural genetic analysis indicated that 19% and 3% of the genetic and unique environmental variance of SDO overlapped with the genetic and unique environmental variance of personality, respectively. Substantial genetic correlations of SDO with Honesty-Humility and Openness domains were found, while marginal unique environmental correlation was found for Openness domain only. The etiological overlap between SDO and personality represents an argument in favour of taking dispositional along with social/contextual perspective in explaining social behaviour.