The causal mechanism between character strengths and subjective wellbeing for older Chinese adults is scarce. It was hypothesized that depression partially mediated the effect of character strengths on subjective wellbeing. Other hypotheses were: (a) character strengths negatively predicted depression, while depression further negatively predicted subjective wellbeing; (b) character strengths had a direct positive effect on subjective wellbeing. To test the hypothesis, a maximum likelihood method in structural equation modeling was performed. The aim was to verify the mediator role of depression from character strengths to subjective wellbeing.
The findings of this study supported the hypothesis that depression was a mediator in the pathway between character strengths and subjective wellbeing. Character strengths had a negative direct effect on depression, while depression further had a negative direct effect on self-reported subjective wellbeing. In addition, character strengths had a positive direct effect on subjective wellbeing. The results were consistent with previous researches that highlighted the role of character strengths and depression on subjective wellbeing[15]. Moreover, the result also illustrates that the elderly who had younger age, longer years of education, higher household income, more social security and social insurance, less depression level, higher SelfQoL and Selfhealth level, demonstrated greater character strengths. These findings expanded those of previous studies by exploring the mediating role of depression for older adults in China, thus providing a reference for improving the subjective wellbeing of Chinese older populations.
Character strengths are considered as a subset of features of personality traits, which are regulated by the elderly’s demographics, such as age, gender, education background, incomes, depression, self reported QoL and health. Character strengths are susceptible to change over a person's entire lifetime. The character strenths, such as neuroticism, extraversion, and openness appeared to diminish as a person ages. This is evidenced by observation of greater character strengths in younger elderly groups[25]. Previous findings indicated that women reported higher character strengths (such as extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) scores than men, which was slightly inconsistent with our results due to the difference of measurements[26]. The vulnerability model shows an amplification of neuroticism risk in those with low education, but a decrease of neuroticism risk for higher education. This strongely suggest the a positive association between education levels and character strengths[27]. In the adult employees, the effect of character strengths on earnings was regulated by gender, namely, women's earnings were strongly affected by character strengths, while the effect of character strengths on men's earnings was small and not always significant[28]. However, there was no gender difference in the elderly, and their income may be directly related to their character strengths.
This study proved that character strengths decreased the incidence of depression and enhanced the subjective wellbeing of older adults. The results were consistent with previous studies [15] and provides a specific pathway and coefficient statistics between variables of character strengths, depression and subjective wellbeing. Character strengths are important contributors to an individual’s mental health, particularly depression, which may predict recurrence of late-life depression in older adults[29, 30]. Therefore, more character strengths may represent lower depression. Character strengths or the natural qualities that a person possess determine that one is intrinsically motivated to modify behavior and emotional functioning in later stage of life(third stage).This acts as a protective factor that increase subjective wellbeing especially in the elderly[31, 32]. Older adults who had higher character strengths level are relatively more likely to have a positive outlook in life and focus on the bright side of things[33]. Novel ideas and actions (e.g., the urge to play and explore) resulting from an open mind, also have been approved to alleviate depression and improve subjective wellbeing in positive psychology theory [34]. Our study also indicates that self-rated health(β=0.716) contributed more to subjective wellbeing than self-rated QoL(β=0.663). Self-rated health including the physical and mental health status both affected subjective wellbeing in this study.
The path analysis revealed that depression was a mediator of the effect of character strengths on subjective wellbeing in the elderly, which accounted for 36% in total variance. The size of its indirect effect on character strengths to subjective wellbeing (β=0.228) was very close to the direct effect size (β=0.290), which implied that depression is an unignored mediator between character strengths and subjective wellbeing. Depression is a symptom of mental health and had adverse consequences on subjective wellbeing in older adults. About half of the participants(47.9%) had CES-D 10 scores at 10 and over, higher than the incidence in Indonesia and the former sampling in China (2011-2012 survey)[23]. Our results confirmed the assumption that depressive symptoms in the elderly have increased in China over the past recent years. Nevertheless, the verified pathway described a bright future to improve the mental health and subjective wellbeing of the elderly by cultivating and enhancing their character strengths.
Character strengths and depression may be the new intervention direction to promote the elderly's subjective wellbeing. One future strategy is suggested to enhance the evaluation of character strengths in the elderly and provide tailored intervention to cultivate their character strengths. Furthermore, strength-training interventions (especially those related to emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness) can be used to improve health and well-being[35]. The other point is to reduce the depression of the elderly and maintain their emotional stability. More attention should be given to the mediating effect of depression on character strengths and subjective wellbeing. Reducing depression may be an effective strategy for promoting the effect of character strengths on the elderly’s subjective wellbeing, which still needs further clinical exploration.
Limitations
Although our data were derived from a large Chinese population-based elderly cohort, there were still some limitations. All the older participants were Chinese. Due to cultural diversity, this may limit the validity and applicability of our research results in other countries. Subjective wellbeing may be categorized into many dimensions, but only two indicators were included in our studies and more indicators may be more accurate.