Focusing on the Past, Present, or Future? Why Proactive Personality Increases Weekly Subjective Well-Being

Subjective well-being (SWB) varies within a person. However, even though previous studies have paid attention to why people with a more proactive personality have higher SWB, they have ignored how proactive personality influences an individual’s state SWB using a within-person approach. According to the time perspective, we propose that proactive personality positively influences an individual’s weekly SWB. Moreover, we propose that weekly rumination, weekly mindfulness, and weekly future optimism—which represent the past, present, and future time perspective, respectively—mediate the relationship between proactive personality and weekly SWB. Using a multilevel model, including 97 people and 388 within-person data points, we found that proactive personality positively influences an individual’s weekly SWB. Only the mediation of weekly future optimism underlying this relationship was supported. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.