Unhappy at work? Personal happiness has a big effect on job satisfaction.
- Josh Wilson
- Apr 1
- 1 min read
Updated: Apr 15
Unhappy at work? Current research shows that being happy at work might be linked more to your personal happiness than traditionally thought.
A major new international study exploring the long-term relationship between personal satisfaction and work satisfaction shows that individual happiness is a major factor for a satisfying work life, not the other way around.
Researchers from the United States, Germany and South Australia analysed data from more than 160,000 respondents across global studies demonstrating the connection between job and life satisfaction and their shift over time.
According to the study, your life satisfaction has a 32 per cent stronger effect on your future job satisfaction than the converse. While job satisfaction does have a positive effect on future life satisfaction, its effect is comparatively weaker.
Christian Dormann, an adjunct research professor at the University of South Australia, says that while the leading theory of researchers and psychologists was the “spillover model”, which proposes that your job satisfaction is positively correlated with your life satisfaction, “our research shows the opposite is more powerful”.
