The Association Between Contentment and Depressive Symptoms: Results From Three Panel Studies

We examined whether contentment was associated with depressive symptoms at both between- and within-person levels, both concurrently and prospectively. We examined our hypotheses using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) that computed the associations between contentment and depressive symptoms, treating tranquility and cheer as covariates, with three sets of data: three waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; n = 27,947), the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Refresher daily diary study (n = 782), and a daily diary study with college students (n = 278). For the between-person and concurrent within-person associations, in all three samples, contentment was associated with depressive symptoms, even when considering tranquility and cheer. Likewise, for the prospective associations, only contentment predicted subsequent depressive symptoms in two of the three samples (the HRS and the MIDUS samples). We discuss implications for studying the etiology and treatment of depression.