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Our sense of satisfaction in life is effected by many factors. For example, feeling good about the neighbourhood in which we live can contribute to our feeling good about life as a whole. The 1993 National Social Science Survey looked at a range of factors, most of which are represented in the graph of ‘comparative contributions’.
While the issues vary according to an individual’s circumstances and personality, some of these factors correlate much more to satisfaction in life than others. For the sample of 2200 Australians survey in the 1993 survey, the factors correlating most highly with life satisfaction as a whole were satisfaction in marriage, work, and in one’s sense of purpose. In other words, those people who were pleased with these areas of their lives were most likely to be pleased about life as a whole. Other aspects of life did not correlate highly with total life-satisfaction. For example, how satisfied one is with one's financial situation and with one's sex life have little to do with one's general sense of satisfaction in life. How satisfied one is with one's children is also not of great significance in terms of one's overall satisfaction with life, although one might find that it was more important for those who had dependent children.
The importance of satisfaction with one’s marriage and work is no surprise as these aspects of life are dominant for most people. More surprising is the fact that being satisfied with one’s sense of purpose in life is even more important as a correlate with satisfaction with life as a whole.
As shown in the figure of satisfaction in life by religious group, those who attend church monthly or more often (labelled as ‘attenders’), were more satisfied in several areas of life than the people who are religious (in terms of prayer, belief, and thinking of themselves as religious) but who do not go to church, and the people who say they have ‘no religion’ or for whom religion is not important. Attenders were more satisfied in their standards of living, although not with their income and financial situations, than others. They were also more satisfied with their sex lives, as well as with their marriages. They were more satisfied with their work than the other groups. However, the area in which the differences were most great was that of the sense of purpose. 48 per cent of attenders said they were very pleased or delighted with their sense of purpose in life, compared with 38 per cent of religious non-attenders and 29 per cent of the non-religious.
Philip Hughes
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