Current and Expected Well-Being in a Global Sample: The Role of Past Experiences, Current Circumstances, and Identity and Personality

People may use different processes to judge their current versus expected well-being. Using Wave 1 of the Global Flourishing Study (N = 98,412; 22 countries), we examined how predictors spanning past experiences, current circumstances, and identity and personality were associated with current and expected (five-year) well-being. We used stochastic search variable selection, a Bayesian method, to identify predictors reliably associated with each outcome, and focused interpretation on those with at least small effects. Participants generally expected their future well-being to exceed their current well-being. When each judgment was adjusted for the other, age and hope for the future showed opposite patterns: older participants reported lower, and more hopeful participants higher, expected well-being when controlling for current well-being. Much of the explained variance was shared across domains, and past experiences contributed little unique variance once current circumstances and identity and personality were accounted for; this suggests that the past may matter for well-being judgments largely through its links to people’s present lives. Our findings demonstrate that current and expected well-being draw on largely overlapping information that is weighted differently depending on whether people evaluate their current or expected lives.