Values and subjective well-being in Singapore

Values and their impact on subjective well-being have been an important area of research in the social sciences. Researchers have conceptualised and developed various measures on values for use in large-scale surveys. One of these measures is the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ; Schwartz, 2007), an established scale that has been validated and widely used (e.g., in the World Values Survey and other studies). Psychological flourishing as an indicator of well-being has garnered considerable research interest (Hone, Jarden, & Schofield, 2014). We used the Flourishing Scale (Diener et al., 2010) to measure whether major aspects of psychological wealth are present in one’s life, and whether one’s life has purpose and meaning. For satisfaction with life, we used the five-item Satisfaction with Life Scale developed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin (1985). In this chapter, we investigate the contributing role of values on 1,503 Singaporeans’ psychological flourishing and satisfaction with life. Our results showed that for the PVQ, self-transcendence and conservation had a significant positive impact on Singaporeans’ psychological flourishing. Conservation had a significant and positive impact on Singaporeans’ satisfaction with life. We further discuss these results and their implications in the context of Singapore.