Diversity in Unity: Perspectives from Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Ariyanto et al. (Eds) 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62665-2 The association between the five-factor model of personality and the subjective well-being of Abdi Dalem of the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat M.A. Alhad & S.S. Turnip Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia ABSTRACT: Happiness or subjective well-being is considered the most crucial motivation for individuals in their life. Personality, with regard to its stability within individuals, has been identified as an essential factor when investigating subjective well-being. The Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality is one of the approaches taken in personality trait theory research and consists of neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Previous studies suggest that extraversion and neuroticism are strong predictors for subjective well-being. This study aims to assess the association between the FFM of personality and the subjective well-being of the Abdi Dalem of the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat, and to identify the most influential trait in relation to subjective wellbeing. The results from multiple regression analysis indicate that 47.3% of subjective wellbeing was predicted by the FFM of personality. Agreeableness, extraversion, and openness to experience appear to be significantly influential in the subjective well-being of the Abdi Dalem of the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat. 1 INTRODUCTION Javanese cultures are strongly related to norms and values passed on from generation to generation. The cultures are well maintained as both a legacy and a way of life. Such norms and values consist of attitudes, manners, and behaviours embedded in interpersonal relationships and in dealing with everyday life. The Javanese believe that in order to live happily, they need to be obedient to those norms and values. The Abdi Dalem of the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat, specifically speaking, are a community in Indonesia that is loyal to the Javanese norms and values. Abdi Dalem means the people who work for the Javanese Kingdom in the sections where they belong. Their salaries range from Rp 25,000 80,000. This amount of salary undoubtedly does not cover living costs in Indonesia today, yet they still remain working as an Abdi Dalem no matter how much money they earn. They do not literally work for money; they instead seek a blessing from the King. They believe that the money they get from the King can be considered as the key for attracting other money in the future. In order to survive on their salaries, Abdi Dalem have side jobs, such as teaching, a Master of Ceremony for Javanese themed occasions, and other relevant jobs. However, they believe that their main job as an Abdi Dalem is a means to their side jobs. In interviews, they revealed that they have no intention to leave their job as an Abdi Dalem because their attachments to the Kingdom are priceless and the tranquillity they acquire because of it is irreplaceable. There are some spiritual matters existing in the Kingdom that make everything inside attached and blessed. This phenomena raises many questions. One of them is related to how happy they are to live as who they are. Happiness in psychological terminology is commonly called subjective well-being (Diener & Diener, 1996). Subjective well-being is defined as an individual s judgement towards events and experiences that occur in their lives, including emotional reactions in dealing with positive or negative realities (Diener, 1984). Several factors can be considered 571
important in influencing happiness or subjective well-being, but personality traits appear to be the most crucial ones (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998). Personality traits explain the consistency of people s behavioural tendency in any situation (Feist et al., 2013). Personality traits possessed by individuals tend to be stable after reaching 30 years old (McCrae & Costa, 1991). This research focused on the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality as one of the best approaches to use due to its universality (Allik & McCrae, 2004). The FFM of personality was developed by McCrae and Costa (2003) in the form of a five-trait classification of neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. These terms can be further defined: neuroticism explains emotional stability and adjustment ability; extraversion explains interpersonal relationship quantity and intensity; openness to experience explains appreciation and open-mindedness towards what happens in life; agreeableness explains interpersonal relationship quality; conscientiousness explains order, persistence, and motivation for particular life goals (McCrae & Costa, 1991). Previous studies suggest that extraversion and neuroticism are strong predictors for subjective well-being (Diener, 1984; Elliot et al., 1997; McCrae & Costa, 1991). This study aims to assess the correlation between the FFM of personality and subjective well-being of Abdi Dalem of the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat, and also to identify the traits that significantly influence their subjective well-being. 2 METHOD 2.1 Research participants Participants consisted of 200 Abdi Dalem aged 40 to 65. In terms of their educational backgrounds, 12 were primary school graduates, 32 were junior high school graduates, 129 were senior high school graduates, and 27 were university graduates. In terms of their gender, 58.5% were male and 41.5% were female. Participants were asked to complete two self-report questionnaires which aimed to measure their personality traits and subjective well-being. The questionnaires were distributed by the researcher simultaneously. 2.2 Research instruments The scale used for measuring personality traits was the Neuroticism-Extraversion- Openness Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) (McCrae & Costa, 2004), which was adapted by Sherly Saragih Turnip and comprised of 60 items (12 items per domain). Participants were asked to respond to each of them on a four-point Likert-type scale (ranging from 1 = Strongly disagree to 4 = Strongly agree). Scores for each domain were calculated by summing all 12 items in their responses. The scale used for measuring happiness was the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Hills & Argyle, 2002) that had been adapted by the researchers using a procedure developed by Beaton (2000) and comprised 29 items. Participants were asked to respond to each of them on a four-point Likert-type scale (ranging from 1 = Strongly disagree to 4 = Strongly agree), with a higher score indicating greater happiness. 3 RESULTS The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire and NEO-FFI have been used in numerous studies in the past in assessing the correlation between the FFM of personality and subjective well-being. Although previous studies suggest that extraversion and neuroticism are the two traits which significantly influence subjective well-being, this study shows a different result. Based on this study s multiple regression analysis on the population of Abdi Dalem of the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat shown in Table 1, three traits 572
(agreeableness, extraversion, and openness to experience) were found to have a significant influence on their subjective well-being, while the other two traits (neuroticism and conscientiousness) had no significant correlation with subjective well-being. Since the population of this study is very indigenous, the analysis results expectedly differed from the previous studies which took place in western countries. Culture has an important impact on that difference because it contributes to the way people give meaning to events and experiences (Triandis & Suh, 2002), and the way personality traits are established through norms and values (Diener et al., 2003). Based on the multiple regression analysis, it was discovered that agreeableness had significantly the strongest role in the subjective well-being of the Abdi Dalem population (β = 0.372, p = 0.000 <0.01). The second trait of significant influence was extraversion (β = 0.223, p = 0.001 <0.01). Finally, the last trait of significant impact was openness to experience (β = 0.181, p = 0.012 <0.05). In general, the FFM of personality contributed to 47.3% of the subjective well-being of the population of Abdi Dalem of the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat (R 2 = 0.473). Based on the t-test, it was discovered that there was no significant difference between male and female Abdi Dalem in their subjective well-being, nor among the three traits of agreeableness, extraversion, and openness to experience that significantly influenced subjective well-being. These findings are shown in Table 2 and confirm that gender had no significant influence on subjective well-being. The results of Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) shown in Table 3 indicated that having a higher level of education correlated with greater conscientiousness and less neuroticism, while having a lower level of education correlated with lower conscientiousness and higher neuroticism. Table 1. Multiple regression of subjective well-being using the FFM of personality. Total samples (N = 200) Variables Β 95% CI Ρ Neuroticism 0.294 0.362 0.103 0.274 Extraversion 0.223 0.202 0.726 0.001 Openness 0.181 0.088 0.687 0.012 Agreeableness 0.372 0.531 1.018 0.000 Conscientiousness 0.153 0.195 0.613 0.309 Gender 0.032 2.178 1.156 0.546 Education 0.115 3.896 1.411 0.357 Dependent variable: Subjective well-being. Table 2. T-test of subjective well-being using the FFM of personality based on gender. Male (N = 117) Female (N = 83) Variable Mean (SD) Mean (SD) T Sig. FFM Neuroticism 27.18 (5.23) 29.10 (6.10) 2.385 0.018 Extraversion 34.34 (3.47) 34.13 (4.10) 0.390 0.697 Openness 32.94 (3.18) 32.73 (4.20) 0.393 0.695 Agreeableness 36.18 (3.48) 35.35 (4.04) 1.553 0.122 Conscientiousness 34.44 (5.47) 32.71 (5.90) 2.139 0.034 Subjective well-being 83.40 (6.95) 81.64 (8.76) 1.585 0.115 Level of significance = 0.05. 573
Table 3. ANOVA of subjective well-being using the FFM of personality based on education level. Primary school (N = 12) Junior high (N = 32) Senior high (N = 129) University (N = 27) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) F Ρ N 38.00 (5.34)* 33.22 (4.67)* 27.05 (3.57)* 21.74 (4.45)* 67.541 0.000 E 36.67 (4.48) ab 33.53 (3.10) ac 33.50 (3.17) bd 37.67 (4.38) cd 13.491 0.000 O 30.58 (1.31) a 31.66 (3.36) b 32.40 (3.02) c 37.48 (3.81) abc 24.319 0.000 A 35.75 (6.20) 34.53 (3.53) a 35.54 (3.39) b 38.81 (2.75) ab 8.060 0.000 C 22.25 (1.76)* 27.34 (1.56)* 34.40 (2.62)* 43.18 (2.22)* 314.097 0.000 SWB 82.25 (6.98) a 80.16 (7.40) b 81.62 (7.21) c 90.85 (6.19) abc 14.226 0.000 Level of significance = 0.01; SWB = Subjective well-being. 4 DISCUSSION The present study was designed to investigate the role of the FFM of personality in predicting subjective well-being of the population of Abdi Dalem of the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat. Based on multiple regression analysis, it was found that the three traits of agreeableness, extraversion and openness to experience were significantly influential in their subjective well-being. The results are relevant to previous studies: agreeableness (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Diener, 1984; Elliot et al., 1997), extraversion (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Diener, 1984; Elliot et al., 1997; McCrae & Costa, 1991), and openness to experience (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998) predict subjective well-being. Traits associated with interpersonal relationships (extraversion and agreeableness) have a significant impact on subjective wellbeing (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998). The three traits mentioned above (agreeableness, extraversion and openness to experience) represent the life of Abdi Dalem of the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat. Based on observations and interviews conducted prior to this research, important explanations of how Abdi Dalem deal with their lives were drawn. The crucial information found and underlined here is related to their interpersonal relationships, the way they see experiences and events in life, and their spirituality. In terms of interpersonal relationships, Abdi Dalem prioritise other people in their social lives; they feel worthy when they can help others and share what they own; they feel their lives are more blessed when their existence in society is appreciated; personal belongings and achievements are less important than their social support system, and to obtain that support system they need to mingle with people in the society, setting aside their race, religion, culture, or other diversity, to live in harmony. The more they socialise and live with their social support system, the happier they are. In terms of seeing events and experiences in life, Abdi Dalem believe that whatever happens in their lives is meant to be: they have visions and plans but believe God has a much better scenario. They reject prejudice, disappointment, anger, or any other negative emotions. What they possess are positive emotions, faith, and trust that everything happens for good reasons. They may not see the effect right away, but they have unlimited patience in waiting for good things to come to them. Because of their belief that what they do may have an impact on what they get in return, Abdi Dalem have very good control of attitude, manner, and behaviour. Thus, they hope that they will not hurt anyone. Regarding spiritual matters existing in the Keraton Kasunanan Surakarta Hadiningrat, it is necessary to fully comprehend that the norms and values being maintained by Abdi Dalem have a strong connection to their faith and belief; what they do is watched by something sacred and powerful living inside the Kingdom, which is why they obey the norms and respect their values. The norms and values mentioned are not only related to their way of life, but also related to the way they speak their language, the way they dress, and the way they interact with people. All are encapsulated in the philosophy of the Javanese culture. 574
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