Personality and Creativity as Predictors of Psychological Well-being in College Students

Developing and maintaining well-being is imperative for numerous aspects of cognitive and conative functioning, physical, and psychological health. The present research was conducted to find out whether psychological well-being in college students can be predicted by personality traits and creativity. We hypothesized that psychological well-being is likely to be predicted by personality traits. Low level of neuroticism, high levels of extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness and creativity. Multistage sampling was used; universities with fine arts department were randomly selected from a list of universities in the city of Lahore. Later (N = 125) students were recruited through purposive sampling technique from the fine arts departments. NEO Five Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992), Creative Behavior Inventory (Hocevar, 1979) and Psychological Well-being Scale (Ryff, 1995) were administered along with demographic information sheet to infer the proposed hypothesis. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that Neuroticism turned out to be a negative predictor whereas Extraversion and Conscientiousness were found to be positive predictors of psychological well-being in college students. None of the control variables (i.e., age, gender, family system, birth order, monthly income, and residential status) and creativity was found to be a significant predictor of psychological well-being. The findings of this study revealed that increasing extraversion and conscientiousness among students can eventually help in enhancing psychological well-being.