Cross-temporal Exploration of the Relationship between Wisdom-related Cognitive Broadening and Subjective Well-being: Evidence from a Cross-validated National Longitudinal Study
How do intra-individual changes in wisdom-related characteristics of cognitive broadening – open-minded reflection on challenging situations, consideration of change, and epistemic humility – relate to subjective well-being over time? To test this relationship, we performed cross-lagged panel analyses from three waves of the national US sample taken across 20 years, utilizing a cross-validation approach: i) conduct exploratory analyses on a random subset of data; ii) pre-register hypotheses and methods; iii) cross-validate pre-registered hypotheses on the other random subset of the data. We found that broadening attitudes predicted greater affect balance and life satisfaction in later years, but not vice-versa. The effect were robust when controlling for trait-level broadening-well-being associations, as well as socio-demographic characteristics, openness, and general cognitive abilities. The direction of the positive longitudinal relationship between broadening attitudes and subjective well-being has implications for major existing theories of adult development and subjective well-being.