State Well-Being, Personality, and Off-Job Activities: a Diary Study - Master Thesis -

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1 State Well-Being, Personality, and Off-Job Activities: a Diary Study - Master Thesis - ame: N.A. Rida Student number: Field of Specialization: Industrial and Organizational Psychology Thesis Supervisor: Dr. W.G.M. Oerlemans Second Reader: Prof. dr. A.B. Bakker

2 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 2 Abstract The main aim of this study was to test whether personality plays a moderating role in the relationship between off-job activities and state well-being (i.e. daily recovery and state happiness). A day reconstruction method was used to accurately examine day-to-day activities and happiness. In total, 641 operable diaries were completed by 228 participants, generating more than 6,300 reported activities and happiness scores. The results show that individuals who score high on introversion derive greater happiness from working overtime, low-effort activities, and derive less happiness from social activities and physical activities compared with their high-extravert counterparts. Furthermore, high neurotic individuals derive greater happiness from working overtime, low-effort activities, and physical activities in comparison to low neurotic individuals. Also, individuals who score high on neuroticism as well as people who score high on introversion deduct greater daily recovery from engaging in household activities, and work overtime activities. The study extends work on Gray s personality theory and the situational congruence hypothesis by demonstrating that engaging in trait-congruent activities is related to more positive emotions. Also, personality traits such as extraversion and neuroticism play a decisive role in the kind of activities that contribute most to daily recovery and state happiness.

3 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 3 State Well-being, Personality, and Leisure Activities: a Diary Study Researchers have increasingly argued that recovery from a workday is important for employee well-being (e.g., Demerouti, Bakker, Geurts & Taris, 2009; Sonnentag, 2001; Sonnentag & Natter, 2004). Thus, engaging in off-job activities that stimulate recovery from job demands in order to replenish one s resources (e.g. physical, psychological resources) is argued to be extremely important for maintaining one s well-being. It has been suggested that the degree of recovery obtained during free time is influenced by the nature of the leisure activity undertaken during that free time (Tucker, Dahlgren, Akerstedt & Waterhouse, 2008). In their effort-recovery model (ERM), Meijman and Mulder (1998) argued that if recovery after a workday is successful, an individual s well-being improves, and resources (e.g. energy) drawn upon during the workday are restored. Empirical research on the ERM, however, has not been able to substantiate this view (e.g., Sonnentag, 2001; Sonnentag & Natter, 2004). Likewise, a more recent paper suggests that the type of activity that is undertaken during off-job time can only have a positive effect on well-being when the activity is congruent with one s personality (Trougakos & Hideg, 2009). But which activities, then, lead to appropriate recovery after a workday? Could it be that other factors such as personality - play a moderating role in the leisure activities-recovery relationship? Moreover, previous research has established a clear link between personality and wellbeing (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1980; Costa & McCrae, 1985). Personality traits account for as much as 40% to 55% of the variance in individual differences in state happiness (Diener, Suh, Lucas & Smith, 1999). Mainly extraversion and neuroticism have shown to have systematic effects on psychological well-being. Accordingly, research indicated that extraversion has a consistent positive correlation with happiness, whereas neuroticism has a consistent negative one. But why is it, then, that extraverts, in general, are happier than introverts? And why do neurotic individuals feel less happy than emotional stable individuals? The central aim of the present study was to reconcile these two research streams leisure activities and recovery, as well as personality and well-being in order to identify the kind of daily lifestyle that contributes most to the happiness within a population of Dutch employees. First, as global questionnaire studies on happiness are far from ideal for capturing day-to-day fluctuations, a within-person study design, the day reconstruction method (DRM; Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz & Stone, 2004), was used to accurately capture those day-to-day fluctuations in activities and happiness among participants. The DRM is a method

4 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 4 that asks participants to systematically reconstruct the preceding day s activities and happiness using procedures designed to reduce recall biases. Second, this study will investigate which off-job activities have a consistent positive influence on daily recovery and happiness, and which activities have a consistent negative relationship with daily recovery and happiness. Third, this study extends research on Gray s personality theory (1991) and the situational congruence hypothesis (Diener, Larsen & Emmons, 1984) by examining whether differences in trait characteristics (personality) moderates the day-to-day relationship between off-job activities and happiness as well as recovery. To the best of my knowledge, this has never been researched before. Measuring (State) Happiness and the Day Reconstruction Method There are two main ways to conceive happiness (Csikszentmihalyi & Wong, 1991). The first view perceives happiness as a personal trait, which is a relatively permanent disposition to experience well-being regardless of external conditions. The second view considers happiness more as a state or a transitory subjective experience responsive to momentary events or conditions in the environment. Researchers presume that these two aspects are inter-related. One would expect, for instance, that a happy person will have more frequent and intense momentary experiences of happiness (Csikszentmihalyi & Wong, 1991). Judgments of happiness, thus, comprise experiencing pleasant emotions or affect during a certain period of time and/or the genetic predisposition of an individual to experience such emotions. Importantly, happiness resides within the experience of a person and is, therefore, always subjective. Yet, past research on well-being has relied almost entirely on reports of life satisfaction and happiness, which are global retrospective measurements of well-being. However, experimental researchers found that retrospective evaluations are heavily affected by a person s mood, memory, and immediate context (e.g., Kahneman, Fredrickson, Schreiber & Redelmeier, 1993; Schwarz, 1983, as cited in Diener et al., 1999). In addition, with their laboratory experiment, Kahneman et al. (1993) showed that with retrospective assessment of global happiness, subjects were unable to accurately assess duration of episodes of positive and negative affect, leading to an incorrect assessment of global happiness. Also, global questionnaire studies on happiness are not adequately capable of capturing day-to-day fluctuations in activities and experienced happiness, or, put differently, the state component of happiness. Therefore, Kahneman et al. (2004) proposed that retrospective evaluations of

5 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 5 happiness were not a good measure of ( state ) happiness. Consistent with this reasoning, the present study measured happiness from a moment-to-moment basis in accordance with the DRM. The DRM assesses how people spend their time by systematically reconstructing a persons activities and experiences of the preceding day with procedures designed to reduce recall biases. Research has shown that the DRM can recover the actual happiness experienced to a significant degree of accuracy, as indicated by their convergence with concurrent mood reports used in experience sampling methods (Oerlemans et al., 2011). The Effort-Recovery Model and off-job activities The ERM (Meijman & Mulder, 1998) suggests that recovery processes play an important role in predicting individual happiness. According to Sonnentag (2001), happiness can be conceptualized as an indicator that recovery is occurring. Accordingly, in this paper, state well-being will be assessed, which encompasses both state happiness as well as daily recovery before going to sleep. Daily recovery refers to the process during which an individual s functioning returns to its pre-stressor level and in which strain is reduced (Meijman & Mulder, 1998). More specifically, the ERM proposes that effort expenditure at work leads to specific load reactions (e.g. accelerated heart rate, elevated blood pressure levels, and fatigue) in the individual. Whenever a person is no longer confronted with any work demands, psychobiological systems will return to their pre-stressor levels and recovery occurs. However, when demands are continuously put on an individual, recovery cannot occur and negative effects (e.g. impaired health, stress, and burnout) will occur within the individual. The effort-recovery model proposes that refraining from work demands allows recovery processes to occur. Moreover, it is crucial that resources needed during work are not further called upon during time periods when recovery is supposed to occur. Although little studies are performed to study recovery on a day-to-day basis, most of them are performed by Sonnentag and colleagues, using the ERM (e.g. Sonnentag, 2001; Sonnentag, 2003, Sonnentag & Natter, 2004). These studies all failed to confirm that demanding activities (e.g. household activities) during off-job time inhibit daily recovery. For example, Sonnentag (2001) could not prove that spending time on household activities is harmful for one s recovery. Also, Sonnentag and Natter (2004) did not find any effect of household and childcare activities as well as low-effort activities on well-being. Instead, they found that, contrary to the ERM, social activities after work time have a detrimental effect on

6 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 6 well-being. These conflicting findings could be explained by the possible moderating role of personality traits in the relationship between off-job activities and state well-being. Personality and Well-being Extraversion refers to the tendency to be sociable, active, fun-loving, outgoing, friendly, and talkative, and neuroticism refers to the tendency to be worrying, insecure, self-conscious, and experience different temperaments (Costa & McCrae, 1980). In general, extraverts report being happier than introverts, and neurotics report being less happy than emotional stable individuals (Costa & McCrae, 1980). Both personality traits have been shown to have systematic effects on psychological well-being (for a review, see Diener & Lucas, 1999). Most theories explaining the personality well-being relationship have focused on this direct effect (see Figure 1, path a) of personality on well-being. For example, Eysenck (1981) proposed that arousal is a key facet of extraversion, such that extraverts are motivated to engage in stimulating social activities because of their inherent under arousal. However, it is also likely that there are indirect or interactional effects, such that different activities affect well-being differently depending on one s personality (Diener, Oishi & Lucas, 2003). For example, although extraverts are generally happier than introverts, Kette (1991) found that extraverted prisoners were less happy than introverted prisoners. This suggests that the situational features of prison were not congruent with an extraverted disposition (Diener et al., 2003). But how does personality affect the link between daily leisure activities and, consequentially, state well-being (see Figure 1, path b)? Examining such moderating effects is the main aim of this study. Figure 1 The Relationship between Personality, Leisure Time Activities, and State Well-Being personality a state well-being Leisure time activities b state Happiness Recovery

7 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 7 Accordingly, Watson and Clark (1997) posit that neurotics and extraverts have a temperamental susceptibility to experience negative and positive affect, respectively. This claim is based on Gray's (1991) theory of personality. Gray claims that two underlying hypothetical brain systems are responsible for much of the individual differences in personality. The behavioral activation system (BAS) regulates reactions to signals of conditioned reward and non-punishment, whereas the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) regulates responses to signals of punishment and non-reward. Experimental studies (e.g., Derryberry & Reed, 1994; Larsen & Ketelaar, 1991; Rusting & Larsen, 1997) confirmed that extraverts are characterized by a greater sensitivity towards rewards and a differential attention to positive stimuli, following a positive mood induction in which people had to think about happy social events. Moreover, it was found that neurotic participants exerted more attention towards negative stimuli. In addition, the situational congruence hypothesis (Diener et al., 1984) proposed that individuals should experience more pleasant affect and less unpleasant affect in situations that are congruent with their personality characteristics. Mixed results for the situational congruence model have been found (Diener et al., 1984; Emmons, Diener & Larsen, 1985). Several predictions have been supported; for example, extraversion correlates more highly with pleasant affect in social situations that in situations in which the individual was alone. Other predictions have, however, not been supported. In line with Diener et al. (1999), it is argued that the limited support for personality-environment interaction effect in past research could be attributable to methodological limitations of early research. Given that early studies all focused on trait happiness for assessing well-being, the state component of well-being was not incorporated in the measurement of happiness. Thus, measuring the impact of specific leisure time activities using a global measurement of well-being would not have been able to capture the fluctuations in activity-specific state happiness. Rather, this research paper will look at the variability of activity-specific state happiness within persons through happiness and recovery, when evaluating the personality-leisure activities interaction. In addition, past research has almost exclusively focused on happiness as an outcome variable for the interaction between off-job leisure activities and personality. Recovery, however, has not yet been researched profoundly. Therefore, we will start by offering hypotheses based on the interaction between personality and leisure time activities on state happiness and incorporate daily recovery in our hypotheses in a more exploratory

8 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 8 manner, based on findings combining the theory of Gray (1991) and the situational congruence hypothesis (Diener et al., 1984). Hypotheses Empirical research and people s daily experiences show that individuals cannot spend all their time on off-job activities that have a recovering effect (Sonnentag & Natter, 2004). Sonnentag (2001) differentiates between two types of activities: high-duty profile activities and low-duty profile activities. The difference between high-profile and low-profile activities is that low-duty profile activities are not obligatory and may be skipped or postponed easily without any negative consequences. These activities correspond with typical leisure time activities such as watching television or meeting with friends and comprise: (a) low-effort activities, (b) social activities, and (c) physical activities. High-duty profile activities (e.g. cooking, working overtime), however, are characterized by a high degree of obligation, and include: (d) job-related activities and (e) household chores and child-care activities. High-Duty Profile Activities Job-related activities draw on the similar resources to those called upon during (formal) working time. According to the ERM (Meijman, & Mulder, 1998), recovery occurs only when no further demands are put on resources that were also required during working time. Following the ERM, Sonnentag and Natter (2004) found that time spent on work-related activities resulted in lower levels of vigor and higher levels of fatigue at bedtime in a population of flight attendants. A similar argument applies to household activities, which are often cognitively or physically demanding activities. However, concerning household activities, Sonnentag and Natter (2004) as well as several other studies (e.g., Sonnentag, 2001; Sonnentag & Zijlstra, 2006), did not find any negative effects on well-being. This lack of findings could be attributable to the notion that all these studies did not look at the possible moderating effect of personality in the high-duty profile activities-recovery relation. Hence, personality differences may influence to what extent individuals may recover from their workday. Both extraversion and neuroticism have been shown to have systematic effects on psychological well-being (for a review, see Diener et al., 1999). Indirect evidence for the proposed moderating effect of personality in the leisure activity- state well-being relationship stems from a study by Brandstätter (1994). This study demonstrates that

9 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 9 introverts as well as neurotic individuals are not happier when engaging in low-duty profile leisure activities than when at work. Emotional stable and extraverted individuals, however, were significantly happier during low-duty profile leisure activities than when at work. Also, the preference for leisure activities, in contrast to working, within neurotics as well as introverted individuals was less pronounced than within extraverts and emotional unstable individuals. In line with Gray s personality theory (1991), it is argued that personality can undo the negative effects of job-related and household activities on state well-being during leisure time. More precisely, previous researchers (e.g., Furnham & Brewin, 1990) have claimed that, as a result of a strong BAS activity, extraverts tend to magnify rewards and non-punishment, whereas neurotic individuals are sensitive to signals of punishment and non-reward as a result of a strong BIS activity. Accordingly, we propose that neurotics will have a stronger incentive for completing activities with a high-duty profile than emotional stable persons, in order to avoid the possible threat of punishment, which leads to an increase amount of negative emotions. Moreover, neurotic individuals will want to remove the threat of a possible negative consequence (e.g. a negative comment from one s superior when not finishing a work-related task at home for the next day) that is attached to not completing a high-duty profile activity. It is possible that this emotional threat will lead to a higher level of stress which, in turn, will hamper state well-being for neurotics, unless they engage in work-related activities and finish the job. The opposite is argued for extraverted individuals. As extraverts are more sensitive to rewards, they will have a stronger incentive to conduct an activity that is perceived as enjoyable or fun, which will increase positive emotions. This does not include job-related activities or household activities, for most individuals. State well-being (i.e. happiness with activities and daily recovery) within extraverts will, then, not improve when engaging in these activities because resources used during the workday cannot be restored. Thus, it is hypothesized that: Hypothesis 1a: Time spent on overtime work is positively related to happiness when neuroticism is high, and time spent on overtime work is negatively related to happiness when neuroticism is low. Hypothesis 1b: Time spent on overtime work is positively related to recovery when neuroticism is high, and time spent on overtime work is negatively related to recovery when neuroticism is low.

10 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 10 Hypothesis 2a: Time spent on overtime work is positively related to happiness when extraversion is low, and time spent on overtime work is negatively related to happiness when extraversion is high. Hypothesis 2b: Time spent on overtime work is positively related to recovery when extraversion is low, and time spent on overtime work activities is negatively related to recovery when extraversion is high. Hypothesis 3a: Time spent on household activities is positively related to happiness when neuroticism is high, and time spent on household activities is negatively related to happiness when neuroticism is low. Hypothesis 3b: Time spent on household activities is positively related to recovery when neuroticism is high, and time spent on household activities is negatively related to recovery when neuroticism is low. Hypothesis 4a: Time spent on household activities is positively related to happiness when extraversion is low, and time spent on overtime work activities is negatively related to happiness when extraversion is high. Hypothesis 4b: Time spent on household activities is positively related to recovery when extraversion is low, and time spent on overtime work activities is negatively related to recovery when extraversion is high. Low-duty profile activities This study concentrates on three types of leisure time activities that have a potentially recovering effect: low-effort activities, social activities, and physical activities. Typical loweffort activities are relatively passive activities such as watching television, reading a book, or just relaxing (Sonnentag, 2001). Often, these activities are characterized by a high degree of passivity, thus representing below-baseline activities. This implies that no demands are put on resources normally required for accomplishing one s work tasks. As a consequence, in line with the ERM, the functional systems can return to their normal, pre-stressor level. Therefore, different researchers have argued that low-effort activities have a recovering effect and engaging in these activities will improve an individual s state well-being (e.g., Sonnentag, 2001; Sonnentag & Natter, 2004). Although low-effort activities seem to be relaxing and pleasurable, another line of research claims that passive leisure activities have a detrimental effect on individual s health and well-being because they are related to boredom and apathy (e.g., Iso-Ahola, 1997). Likewise, Tkach and Lyubomirsky (2006) found that frequent passive leisure was not related to happiness. An explanation for these inconclusive, and apparently contradicting, findings is that personality plays an important moderating role in the passive leisure happiness relation. Hence, researchers found that neuroticism is related to passive forms of leisure activities. For

11 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 11 example, Nias (1977) found that an interest in listening to music was associated with neuroticism, and Hills and Argyle (1998) found that neuroticism was associated with an increased amount of watching TV. In addition, researchers also found that introversion might also be related to passive forms of leisure activities (Kirkcaldy & Furnham, 1990). These findings support the situational congruence hypothesis (Diener et al., 1984), which proposes that experiencing trait-congruent or trait-incongruent situations is related to differential levels of affect, so that individuals with high scores on a personality characteristic experience positively valenced affect when engaging in congruent situations compared with individuals with low scores on that personality characteristic. In contrast individuals with high scores on a personality characteristic experience more negatively valenced affect when engaging in a situation discordant with the trait than individuals with low scores on that personality characteristic experience when engaging in that behavior. Specifically, the trait of extraversion is related to energy, excitement-seeking and action-orientation. Naturally, these features are trait-discordant with low-effort activities. Thus, it is expected that extraverts would experience negatively valenced affect when engaging in low-effort activities. The opposite is true for introverted individuals, who are expected to experience positive valenced affect when engaging in low-effort activities. Moreover, the trait of neuroticism is related to anxiety, frustration, and stress. Engaging in activities that provide maximum opportunity for relaxation, as with low-effort activities, is expected to render more positive valenced affect for high neurotic individuals than for low neurotic individuals. Thus, it is proposed that: Hypothesis 5a: Time spent on low-effort activities is positively related to happiness when neuroticism is high, and time spent on low-effort activities is negatively related to happiness when neuroticism is low. Hypothesis 5b: Time spent on low-effort activities is positively related to recovery when neuroticism is high, and time spent on low-effort activities is negatively related to recovery when neuroticism is low. Hypothesis 6a: Time spent on low-effort activities is positively related to happiness when extraversion is low, and time spent on low-effort activities is negatively related to happiness when extraversion is high. Hypothesis 6b: Time spent on low-effort activities is positively related to recovery when extraversion is low, and time spent on low-effort activities is negatively related to recovery when extraversion is high.

12 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 12 Social activities refer to activities that focus on a social contact, such as meeting with family members, friends or a having a drink with colleagues after work time. This category also includes activities such as going to a party, having dinner with others, or phoning other people (Sonnentag, 2001). The literature provides two main mechanisms why social participation has the potential for successful recuperation after a workday. First, social activities offer the perfect opportunity for social support. There is broad empirical evidence that social support has positive effects on well-being (Viswesvaran, Sanchez & Fischer, 1999) and that social support reduces the negative influence of job demands on psychological wellbeing (Bakker, Demerouti & Euwema, 2005). Second, during social activities, no further demand is put on resources needed during work-related activities. As a consequence, resources that were drained from a person during the workday can be replenished (Meijman & Mulder, 1998). Accordingly, different studies report a positive relation between social participation and happiness (e.g., Bradburn, 1969; Diener et al., 1984). For example, Bradburn (1969) has found a direct link between social participation and happiness when controlling for health and other demographic variables. Likewise, a more recent study from Helliwell and Putnam (2004) found a strong link between social capital, measured by the strength of a person s social ties, and subjective well-being. Moreover, Tkach and Lyubomirsky (2006) found that social affiliation, as a happiness-increasing strategy, showed a strong positive relation to happiness. But, despite all the positive evidence for the social activities-happiness interaction, several studies did not find any relationship between social activities and happiness (e.g., Liang, Dvorking, Kahana & Mazian, 1980; Sonnentag & Natter, 2004). These contradictory findings can be explained by personality as a third variable, which moderates the social participation-happiness relationship. In line with this notion, Trougakos and Hideg (2009) found that introverts were not able to recover their resources after a group lunch; rather it exhausted them even more. Extraverts, conversely, who enjoy being in the company of others, experienced a group lunch break as a respite and experienced greater restoration of their resources. An important consideration is that, undoubtedly, people have different needs for social activities. Perceived ability is a strong prevenient of taking up a leisure activity (Argyle & Lu, 1990; Lu & Hu, 2005). Consequently, introvert and neurotic individuals may lack the necessary social skills and, therefore, lots of energy is directed towards compensating for this lack of skills. In turn, recovery is impaired and resources are continued to be drawn upon and

13 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 13 state well-being declines. This notion is supported by Diener et al. (1999), whom reported that extraverts are happier than introverts in social situations. Accordingly and in line with the situational congruence hypothesis (Diener et al., 1984), it is expected that extraverts would experience positively valenced affect when engaging in social activities, as they tend to be talkative, and feel more comfortable around other people. The opposite is true for introverted individuals, who are more tranquil and less socially skilled than extraverts. As a consequence, introverts are expected to experience negative valenced affect when engaging in social activities. Moreover, the trait of neuroticism is related to anxiety, frustration, and stress. High neurotic individuals might focus more on negative feedback, and fear social disapproval during social encounters. Engaging in social activities is, therefore, expected to render more negative valenced affect for high neurotic individuals than for low neurotic individuals. Thus, it is proposed that: Hypothesis 7a: Time spent on social activities is positively related to state happiness when neuroticism is low, and time spent on social activities is negatively related to happiness when neuroticism is high. Hypothesis 7b: Time spent on social activities is positively related to recovery when neuroticism is low, and time spent on social activities is negatively related to recovery when neuroticism is high. Hypothesis 8a: Time spent on social activities is positively related to happiness when extraversion is high, and time spent on social activities is negatively related to happiness when extraversion is low. Hypothesis 8b: Time spent on social activities is positively related to recovery when extraversion is high, and time spent on social activities is negatively related to recovery when extraversion is low. Physical activities comprise a wide range of behaviors; including exercise, sports, and other activities such as work on one s hobbies and try to maintain health and fitness. During physical activities, most individuals use other resources than those needed in work accomplishment processes, with the exception of individuals who work in jobs with heavy physical demands. Active involvement in physical activities implies a cognitive distraction of job-related duties (Yeung, 1996). Consequently, a temporary relief from job-related problems and demands occur, that allows the functional system to recover to baseline energy levels. Moreover, physical activities stimulate physiological and psychological processes, which contribute to an increase in individuals health and well-being (Wankel & Berger, 1990). Empirical research shows that physical activities have a positive effect on individuals mood and well-being, including both short-term and long-term benefits (e.g., Demerouti et al., 2009;

14 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 14 Sonnentag, 2001). Also, Tkach and Lyubomirsky (2006) found that active leisure was a strong predictor of happiness. Previous research has demonstrated that there might be a difference in physical activities for neurotics and emotionally stable individuals. Evidence for this difference comes from research performed by Lu and Argyle (1994), who have found that neurotics tend to prefer hobbies rather than sports. Moreover, Brebner (1985) found that sports people tend to be low on neuroticism. In addition, Kirkcaldy and Furnham (1990) note that neuroticism is a powerful predictor for whether a person likes or dislikes physical activities. Research has also established a clear link between extraversion and physical activities. Firstly, Hills and Argyle (1998) found that people who score high on extraversion tend to belong to sports clubs more often. Likewise, Brebner and Cooper (1985) pointed out that, undoubtly, persons who engage in sports tend to be extraverted because of their higher pain thresholds, sensation-seeking, assertiveness, competitiveness, and speed of reaction. Finally, researchers found that the introversion-extraversion factor seems most powerful in predicting sport preference (Kirkcaldy & Furnham, 1990). In accordance with the congruence hypothesis (Diener et al., 1984), it is argued that people choose their leisure activity in congruence with their personality which, in turn, will influence how happy a person feels during a specific activity. Moreover, improved well-being indicates that recovery is occurring. Thus, choosing a leisure activity that is congruent with one s personality will improve state well-being. For example, it is expected that, congruent with their energetic and excitement-seeking personality, extraverts will beneficiate more from pursuing physical activities. Indeed, it was found that physical activities are pursued for the excitement and are associated with states of high arousal (Hills & Argyle, 1997). This is not meant to imply that physical activities will have a negative influence on introverted individuals, as physical activities undoubtly contribute to a healthy and balanced lifestyle (Wankel & Berger, 1990). The same argument applies for neurotic individuals: congruent with their anxious, and tensed personality, introverts might be frightened to injure themselves during a physical activity. This leads to negative valenced emotions, and physical activities will, therefore, have a negative influence on state well-being (i.e. state happiness and recovery before sleep). Therefore, it is hypothesized that: Hypothesis 9a: Time spent on physical activities is positively related to state happiness when neuroticism is low, and negatively related to state happiness when neuroticism is high.

15 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 15 Hypothesis 9b: Time spent on physical activities is positively related to state happiness when neuroticism is low, and negatively related to state happiness when neuroticism is high. Hypothesis 10a: Time spent on physical activities is more strongly positively related to state happiness when extraversion is high than when extraversion is low. Hypothesis 10b: Time spent on physical activities is more strongly positively related to recovery when extraversion is high than when extraversion is low. Methods Participants In total, more than 10,000 subjects participated in an electronic diary survey, which was part of an ongoing research project on lifestyle and happiness in The Netherlands. This resulted in 106,936 reported activities and momentary happiness scores. Of these participants, approximately 1,736 respondents also both filled in the personality inventory as well as an electronic diary survey on the internet. However, to get an accurate indication of people s daily off-job activity patterns and recovery, only days on which respondents had worked were included in the study. In total, 228 out of the 1,736 (13%) respondents met this criterion. The average number of daily DRM diaries filled out by participants was 2,87 times and ranged from 1 up to 41 times (SD = 3,89). After removing 13 unreliable diaries, which were used solely for test purposes, we gathered a total of 641 operable diaries for the working population. This resulted in a total of 6,385 reported activities after work time (starting pm) and momentary happiness scores. The mean age was 40 years (SD = 11.42), ranging from 15 to 81 years. The working sample consisted of 25 males and 203 females (11% to 89%). Concerning income, 43% of the participants earned an above average income (> 2,500 a month), 36% earned an average income ( 2500 a month), and 21% earned a below average income (< 2,500 a month). Furthermore, on average, the respondents worked 31,10 (SD = 11,15) hours a week and 4,29 (SD = 1.14) days a week. Procedure The data were collected through an ongoing research project on lifestyle and happiness in The Netherlands. Participants were recruited via social media, and HTML links on internet sites in the Netherlands. Upon agreement, participants were first invited to fill out their personal profile, which consisted out of socio-demographic and lifestyle variables, like their

16 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 16 age, gender, educational level, family life, and employment status. Moreover, participants were provided with the opportunity to fill in the NEO-FFI. Thereafter, participants created a unique name and password which allowed them to access their happiness diary. The happiness diary followed the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman et al, 2004). On the first webpage, participants were asked to reconstruct their previous day in chronological order by filling in what kind of activities they had pursued and the approximate time they had spend on each activity. Participants could choose from main activity categories as proposed by Sonnentag and colleagues (Sonnentag, 2001; Sonnentag, 2003; Sonnentag & Zijlstra, 2006). Within these main categories, respondents were shown specific sub-activities associated with each main categories. Also, participants could indicate with whom they had pursued each activity (e.g. with friends, alone). On the second page of the happiness diary, respondents were presented a chronological overview of their reported activities and were asked to rate how happy they had felt during each activity. Thereafter, participants answered about their daily recovery before going to sleep that day. Measures Daily off job-activities. Based on the work of Sonnentag (2001), main categories included high-duty profile activities and low-duty profile activities. High-duty profile activities consisted of: (a) job-related activities and (b) household activities. Job related activities included time spent on overtime work. More precisely, we calculated the amount of time a person spent working each day. Next we subtracted the standard amount of work hours in The Netherlands (8 hours a day). Thereafter, we presumed that overtime work was classified as the hours a person had worked that day, beyond the standard amount of 8 hours a day. On average, participants indicated they had worked overtime 163 times (M = 0:19; SD = 0:51 hours a day). Household activities included cooking, cleaning, doing groceries, doing odd jobs, doing administration and, finally, taking care of one s children and spouse. On average, participants indicated they had engage in household activities 357 times (M = 1:07; SD = 1:53 hours a day). Low-duty profile activities consisted of: (c) social activities, (d) physical activities, and (e) low-effort activities. Social activities consisted of talking, going out to the theater, the movies, a club, cultural event, a bar, and watching sports with friends. On average, participants indicated they had engaged in social activities 153 times (M = 0:37; SD = 1:22

17 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 17 hours a day). Physical activities included walking, cycling, and doing sports. On average, participants indicated they had pursued physical activities a 141 times (M = 0:19; SD = 0:47 hours a day). Lastly, Low-effort activities included reading, using one s computer, watching television, listening to music, taking a nap and doing nothing. On average, participants indicated they had engaged in low-effort activities 491 times (M = 2:22; SD = 2:21 hours a day). State Happiness during off-job activities was rated with one item for each reported activity during the day using a faces scale that ranged from 0 (extremely unhappy) up to 10 (extremely happy). According to Abdel-Khalek (2006), a single item for measuring happiness has good temporal stability and concurrent, convergent, and divergent validity. Daily recovery before sleep was assessed with three items that were slightly adapted from the measure of Sonnentag (2003), being, Yesterday before going to sleep, I felt recovered, Yesterday before going to sleep, I felt rested, and Yesterday before going to sleep I felt I had enough time to recover from my workday. Items were answered on a 7- point likert scale ranging from 1 (I don t agree at all) up to 7 (I totally agree). Cronbach s alpha varied between 0.93 and 0.94 depending on the week-day, indicating very good reliabilities. Extraversion and euroticism were measured using the NEO-FFI. The NEO-FFI is a shortened version of the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO PI R; Costa & McCrae, 1992), and was used to assess personality traits (only neuroticism and extraversion were used in this particular study), which represent tendencies to show consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions. The 60 items of the self-report questionnaire allow a reliable measurement of five domains of adult personality (neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness). The items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) up to 5 (strongly agree) and are balanced to control for acquiescence response set. Cronbach s alpha was.89 for neuroticism and.81 for extraversion, showing good levels of reliability. Control variables. We controlled for gender, educational level, income, the amount of hours worked that day, workdays a week, and day of the week (weekend vs. a weekday). Controlling for work variables is important in order to cancel out any correlation between leisure activities and recovery due to their mutual dependence on the influence of work demands (Tucker et al., 2008).

18 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 18 Analysis The data have a hierarchical structure with days nested within persons and activities nested within days. We aggregated the time spend on each activity to the day-level. Therefore, a hierarchical linear modeling using a cross-level interaction between personality and activities was used to analyze the data. In this analysis, first, a null model that includes only the intercept was entered. In the following steps, the person-level variables gender, educational level, income, hours worked, workdays a week, day of the week, neuroticism, and extraversion were entered and centered at the grand mean (step 1). Hereafter, personality variables were entered and, also, centered at the grand mean (step 2). In step 3, time spent on off-job activities was aggregated to the day-level and was centered at the person mean. The last step consisted of entering the cross-level interactions in the model (step 4). Momentary happiness derived from off-job activities and recovery before going to sleep was aggregated to the day-level and was centered at the person mean. Hierarchical linear modeling is the most appropriate method for dealing with this kind of a hierarchically structured dataset and takes the dependence of the day-level measurements within each person into account (Snijders & Bosker, 1999). Data analysis was conducted using MLwiN (Rabash, Browne, Healy, Cameron & Charlton, 2000). Results Preliminary Analyses Table 1 reports means, standard deviations, bivariate correlations, and zero-order correlations. Table 1 shows that mean state happiness score was 6.61 (SD = 1.41), and mean recovery score was 4.11 (SD = 1.52). As expected, we found that extraversion is positively related to state happiness (r =.27, p <.001). In contrary, neuroticism is negatively related to state happiness (r = -.35, p <.001). Unexpectedly, neuroticism also correlated negatively with daily recovery before sleep (r = -.22, p <.001). Furthermore, as is often the case, neuroticism and extraversion are strongly intercorrelated (r = -.53 p <.001). When we look at time spent on activities, Table 1 shows that participants spend most of their daily off-job time on low-effort activities and least time on overtime work activities and physical activities. Moreover, the data shows that extraverts spend more time on physical activities (r =.09, p <.05). Other activities show non-significant relationships with personality traits.

19 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 19 Daily Recovery before Sleep Before testing our hypotheses, we examined the variability of recovery before sleep across the two levels (person level, day level). Of total variance, 43.3% was between persons (1.134/( )) and 56.7% within persons at the day level (1.485/( )), indicating that recovery before sleep varied significantly within persons from day-to-day. Due to the high intercorrelation between neuroticism and extraversion, we opted for two different models: one model solely comprising neuroticism, and one model solely including extraversion. In Model 1, neuroticism or extraversion was entered as a predictor variable, and sex, income, education, whether the specific day was weekend or working day and the amount of hours worked on that particular day as control variables. In Model 2, the type of activity (social, physical, household, and low-effort, and overtime work activities) was added. Model 3 included the social, physical, household, low-effort, and overtime work activities x personality (extraversion and neuroticism) interaction terms. Table 2 and Table 3 present the findings of each Model. We tested the improvement of each model over the previous one by computing the differences of the respective log likelihood statistic -2*log, subjecting the difference to a chisquared (chi²) test. Regarding daily recovery, results demonstrated that Model 1 had a better model fit compared to the Null (intercept only) model (see Table 2, -2 x log = , df = 6, p <.001; and Table 3, -2 x log = , df = 6, p <.001), indicating that the control variables explain a part of the variance in daily recovery. We did not find that Model 2 had a better fit than Model 1 (see Table 2, -2 x log = 2.891, df = 5, p <.001; and Table 3, -2 x log = 3.090, df = 5, ns), implying that off-job activities do not account for any variance in recovery before sleep. Furthermore, concerning the neuroticism x activities interaction, Model 3 had a better fit than Model 2 (see Table 2, -2 x log = , df = 5, p <.001), suggesting that the personality x leisure activities interaction (partly) explains the variance in daily recovery. In contrast, regarding the extraversion x activities interaction, Model 3 did not have a better fit than Model 2 (see Table3, -2 x log = 8.710, df = 5, ns). Results in Table 2 and 3, Model 1, show that income was positively related to recovery before sleep (t = 1.78, p <.05). Gender, education, whether the day was a weekend or workday, and hours worked that day, however, were not related to recovery before sleep in both models. Moreover, neuroticism, related negatively to recovery before sleep (see Table 2; t = -3.45, p <.001). Extraversion, however, was not connected to recovery before sleep.

20 Personality, Off-job activities and State Well-Being 20 Interestingly, results in Table 2, Model 2 indicated that there were no main effects of leisure activities on daily recovery before sleep. State Happiness Hereafter, the variability of state happiness across the two levels (person level, day level) was examined more thoroughly. Of the total variance, 66,4% was between persons (1.168/( )) and 33,6% at the day level (0.820/( )) showing that state happiness depended mostly on differences in personality and demographic/lifestyle variables, but also on how a person chooses to spent his/her time during the day. Models and hypotheses were tested in a similar manner as with daily recovery before sleep. Concerning state happiness, results demonstrated that Model 1 had a better model fit compared to the Null (intercept only) model (see Table 4, -2 x log = , df = 6, p <.001; and Table 5, -2 x log = 6, , df = 6, p <.001), meaning that control variables explain a part of the variance in state happiness. We did, however, not find that Model 2 had a better fit than Model 1 (see Table 4, -2 x log = 5.452, df = 5, ns; and Table 5, -2 x log = 9, , df = 5, ns). This finding implies that off-job activities per se do not explain a part of the variance in state happiness. Furthermore, we found that Model 3 had a better fit than Model 2 (see Table 4, -2 x log = , df = 5, p <.001; and Table 5, -2 x log = , df = 5, p <.001), suggesting that the personality x leisure activity interaction explains a part of the variance in state happiness. The results in Model 1 showed that hours worked on a day (up to a maximum of eight hours) were significantly positively related to state happiness (see Table 4, t = 2.38, p <.05; and Table 5, t = 2.57, p <.01). Gender, education, and whether the day was a weekend or workday, however, were not related to state happiness. Income was only related to state happiness in the interaction model between extraversion and daily activities (t = 3.08, p <.001), but not in the neuroticism and daily activities model. Neuroticism related negatively to state happiness (t = -4.87, p <.001), and extraversion was positively related to state happiness (t = 4.18, p <.001). Again, the results in Table 4 and 5, Model 2 indicated that there was no significant main effect of time spent on off-job activities on state happiness. Testing Hypotheses Results from Table 2 up to Table 5 show all interaction effects between time spent on off-job activities and personality on recovery before going to sleep, as well as state happiness. Out of