Control beliefs and subjective well-being in later adulthood.

Abstract

Subjective beliefs about one's ability to control events and actions may greatly alter how one views oneself and one's life circumstances. Despite much theoretical joining of efficaciousness with a more robust sense of well-being for older adults, there have only rarely been attempts to empirically link control beliefs to broader concepts like happiness or life satisfaction. The current study focused on the link between control beliefs and subjective well-being, how control beliefs may vary for different domains of life (i.e., social relations and physical health), and the possible moderating effect of domain importance on the relationship between control beliefs and well-being in an elderly sample. Subjects (N = 129; M = 68.6 years) completed a number of questionnaires concerning generalized locus of control, domain-specific control beliefs relating to physical health and social relations, subjective and objective evaluations and importance ratings for health and social relations, and several well-being measures. The domain-specific control scales proved to be better predictors than the generalized control measures for the outcome variables of self-evaluations of health and social relations. The most consistent predictors of higher subjective well-being in a series of hierarchical regression analyses were higher subjective self-evaluations of physical health and social relations and stronger feelings of accommodative, or secondary control (i.e., flexibility in adjusting one's priorities and goals in the face of environmental and/or personal limitations). The results from this study emphasize the usefulness of domain-specific multidimensional control measures and domain-specific evaluations, and suggest a potentially interesting relationship between the subjective well-being of older adults and feelings of accommodative control. The ability to adjust one's goals and preferences to accommodate external and internal constraints may be an important factor in the maintenance of high well-being in older adulthood.