Young Adults' Life Satisfaction: The Role of Self-Regulatory Efficacy Beliefs in Managing Affects and Relationships Across Time and Across Cultures

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to examine the structural path of influence through which perceived self-efficacy to regulate positive and negative affect in concert with perceived self-efficacy to manage parental and social relationships contributes to young adults' global life satisfaction in two diverse cultural contexts. The first prospective study was conducted in Italy with 462 participants equally distributed by sex (18 to 20 years at Time 1; 21 to 23 years at Time 2); the second study was conducted in Bolivia with 307 participants aged 18 to 24 years. Findings substantially corroborated the posited path of relationships among variables of interest; yet the examined variables accounted for a much larger percentage of variance in young adults' life satisfaction in Italy than in Bolivia.