Moderating effects of gender and age on the relationship between self-esteem and life satisfaction in mainland Chinese

Previous studies indicated that not only individual self-esteem (e.g., Diener & Diener, 1995; Neto, 1993) but also collective self-esteem (e.g., Crocker, Luhtanen, Blaine, & Broadnax, 1994; Zhang & Leung, 1999) contributed to prediction of life satisfaction. When the effects of individual and collective self-esteems on life satisfaction have been demonstrated, a further question in life satisfaction research is that whether the relationship between self-esteem and life satisfaction is subject to the influence of boundary conditions. The present investigation focused on moderating effects of gender and age on the relationship between self-esteem and life satisfaction in Chinese people. Participants were 1347 Mainland Chinese (aged from 14 to 88 years, 52.3% female) from three generations. They finished the General Life Satisfaction Scale (Leung & Leung, 1992), Life Domain Satisfaction Scale (revised from Michalos, 1985), Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and Collective Self-Esteem Scale (Luhtanen & Crock...