Me, my thoughts and I – personality as a moderator of the effect of thoughts on subjective well-being

We study how personality impacts people's experiences of their thoughts in terms of experienced happiness and worthwhileness. Over two weeks, 483 participants completed over 20,000 experience sampling questionnaires including reports of hedonic and eudemonic well-being, and type and content of thoughts. Using multi-level modelling we show that personality traits recorded prior to the start of the study for all participants interact with thought variables to significantly predict experiences of worthwhileness. Openness was the personality trait with the greatest impact on how content and type of thoughts affected worthwhileness. Predictions of happiness were not significantly improved by the addition of interactions between personality and thoughts. Implications for the broader literature on the relationship between personality and well-being are discussed.