Emerging Adulthood – an Easy Time of Being? Meaning in Life and Satisfaction with Life in the Time of Emerging Adulthood

Abstract

Personality seems to be a stable predictor of satisfaction with life and meaning in life. The effects of emerging adulthood are currently under-explored. The aim of the present study is to explore whether the characteristics of emerging adulthood explain additional variance in satisfaction with life and meaning in life that is not explained by the Big Five factors. The sample involved 244 Slovak university students (13.1% men), who completed the Satisfaction with Life Scale, Meaning in Life Questionnaire, Big Five Inventory-2 and the Questionnaire of Emerging Adulthood characteristics. The results of linear hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for age and gender, showed that emerging adulthood characteristics added 6.4% of the explained variance in satisfaction with life, 28.1% of the explained variance in presence of meaning and 17.1% of the explained variance in search for meaning. The current study shows that the emerging adulthood characteristics are important for satisfaction with life and meaning in life.