Unraveling values and well-being-Disentangling within- and between-person dynamics via a psychometric network...

There have been long-standing debates on the relationships between values as important motivational goals and well-being. We used a longitudinal network perspective to examine how value states and well-being are related over time, separating within-person lagged, within-person contemporaneous, and between-person perspectives. A total of 227 young adults (1,007 observation points) participated in the study and rated their values states and well-being over a 6-day period. Value-well-being linkages varied across levels of analysis for participants who reported at least three times (N = 187). Momentary self-transcendence values predicted both simultaneous and subsequent well-being. The motivationally opposing self-enhancement values negatively related to well-being contemporaneously within person. This supports clinical research emphasizing that pursuing other-focused values increases well-being and highlights the importance of values for well-being. At the same time, individual differences in self-transcendence values were negatively related to well-being, supporting previous value models. In line with self-determination theory, openness to change values were related to well-being at both the within- and between-person level. These patterns unify diverging theoretical positions, and suggest that different dynamics operate across levels (within-person lagged or contemporaneous vs. between-person). We also provide new insights into value dynamics by describing how distributions of value states may give rise to more stable value differences between individuals. Overall, within- and between-person associations differed suggesting greater attention to person-level processes is needed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).