Sense of Identity and Life Satisfaction in College Students

This study examined the relationships between sense of identity, life satisfaction, and the Big Five personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability (inverse of neuroticism), extraversion, and openness. It considered overall life satisfaction as well as the life satisfaction subsets of personal, extrinsic, school, and outcome satisfaction. The present investigation was a secondary analysis of an archival data source. The data were collected from 2,300 students at a large, southeastern university. Significant correlations were found for sense of identity in relation to all aspects of life satisfaction. Sense of identity added incremental validity to the Big Five normal personality traits in predicting life satisfaction. Age and gender were not moderator variables for the relationship between sense of identity and life satisfaction. Implications for theory and future research were discussed.