Examining within-person relationships between state assessments of affect and eudaimonic well-being using multi-level structural equation modeling

Prior research has highlighted the possibility that current affect may be interchangeable with state assessments of other dimensions of subjective well-being. In the present study, we conducted a systematic replication and extension by examining the relationship between state assessments of affect and eudaimonic well-being (meaning, core self-evaluation, authenticity, and gratitude) in a 14-day diary assessment (N = 207 with 2,147 assessments). We utilized multi-level structural equation modeling (ML-SEM) with affect as a time-varying covariate and found that the impact of affect for these outcomes was less consequential than for assessments of state satisfaction, and that the impact of positive affect on these dimensions was stronger than that of negative affect.