Self-Role Integration: A Person-Specific Predictor of Life Satisfaction and Prosocial Behavior

We investigated whether a novel self-structural variable, self-role integration, incrementally predicts life satisfaction and prosocial behavior beyond dispositional trait predictors that are known from prior research to be linked to these outcomes. At Time 1, 223 participants (171 female) completed measures of life satisfaction, optimism, the Big Five personality traits, reward and punishment sensitivity (BIS/BAS), psychological distress, and prosocial behavior. They then completed an idiographic measure in which they selected from a list of trait terms to describe their actual self and a series of role-specific identities. At Time 2 (60 days later, N = 134), they again reported prosocial behavior. Self-role integration was computed from the linkages between actual self and role-identities derived from a Hierarchical Classes (HICLAS) analysis of each participant's self-descriptive data. Self-role integration concurrently and prospectively predictive of prosocial behavior beyond significant trait-level predictors, and was marginally significantly correlated with life satisfaction beyond a set of trait-level predictors. Results demonstrate that a self-structural variable can add predictive utility to life satisfaction and prosocial behavior beyond dispositional traits.