Life events and perceptions of life quality: Developments in a two-factor approach

This paper reviews research on how a two-factor model explains relationships between life events and perceptions of life quality. Positive life events were found to have different effects than negative life events. People rated their distress higher after experiencing negative events, but they did not always rate the quality of their daily lives lower. Positive events increased ratings of positive affect but were usually unrelated to psychological distress. While these data fit a two-factor model of psychological well-being best, such a model left some important exceptions to that model unexplained. To address such issues, the review focused on those occasions when the effects of events crossed affective domains. This fuller assessment promises to provide an integrative approach to understanding some of the affective and congnitive processes linking life events to quality of life.