Life Management Strategies as Mediators Between Information Processing Style and Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

This study investigates the mediating role of life management strategies to see how information processing styles indirectly influence subjective well-being. Participants were 440 university students (female = 202, male = 238) ranging in age from 18 to 50 years from all levels and all majors from universities in Quchan, Iran. In a nonexperimental design and by using path analysis, we found that selection, optimization, and compensation fully mediated the relationship between information processing styles and subjective well-being. Our proposed model fitted well to the data and could account for a significant proportion of variance in satisfaction with life, positive affects, and negative affects’ scores (42%, 51%, and 35%, respectively). These results provide empirical evidence that rational information processing style is a defining factor for planning, and its impact on subjective indicators of well-being operates indirectly and through life management strategies. This model, with a more active approach, has implications for both theory and practice in psychotherapy.