ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 discusses the effects of personal dispositions on personal well-being, given the effects of other factors. Most dispositions significantly contributed to well-being. Among them, optimism, affiliative humor, and gratitude turned out to have strong contributions. Dialecticism and creativity showed moderate contributions. Future orientation, leisure activity value, curiosity, friendship, and forgiveness unfolded weak contributions. By contrast, aggressive humor displayed a strong negative effect, and study value, religious value, and just world belief presented a weak negative effect. Essentially, Chinese characteristics, indicated by Mainland China location and dialecticism at regional and college contexts, tempered the effects of many personal dispositions on well-being. In addition, the contextual Chinese characteristics moderated the effects of many dispositions according to the congruence and complementarity theses. The congruence effect happens when the contextual characteristic raises the contribution of the disposition congruent with the characteristic. Similarly, the complementarity effect occurs when the contextual characteristic strengthens the effect of the disposition complementary to the characteristic.
