A guest post by Shengquan Ye, Anat Bardi, Ting Kin Ng
Have you ever noticed that when life feels good, the things you care about also change? Maybe when you’re happy, you’re more open to new experiences, but during tougher times, you hold on to what’s already familiar. Psychologists have long debated whether our values influence our well-being or if our well-being shapes our values.
In our recent article, we explored this question by tracking students in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom as they started university, one of life’s major transitions. Over repeated time-points, we measured satisfaction with life, positive and negative affect and the importance of values like openness to change or personal success.
Our results suggest that well-being often comes first. Students who started university with higher life satisfaction or self-esteem later placed more importance on values such as being open to new thoughts and experiences or aiming for personal achievement. Values only predicted later well-being once: in Hong Kong, students who initially cared more about personal success later experienced more positive emotions. Importantly, these patterns varied across regions, showing how societal context may influence the relationship between values and well-being.
The findings imply that supporting students’ well-being during life transitions might do more than just make them feel good temporarily. It could also foster the development of values that help them adapt to new settings and succeed in the long run. Overall, the results remind us that happiness and values are connected—they may influence each other in subtle ways shaped by culture and environment.
In short, what we value and how we feel go together. During times of change, feeling good may be the key to redefining what truly matters.