Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine relationship between the experiences of the people partici­pating in communal life/activity and their subjective well-being. The 684 subjects from the 16 voluntary groups were sampled and surveyed with a questionnaire that examined major characteristics of the group activity such as interpersonal relationship within the group, emotional/psychological experiences from the group activity, level of participation in the group activity, and organizational characteristics of the group. They also completed measures including the Satisfaction with Life Scale(SWLS), the Mood Evaluation Scale(MES), and Life Orientation Scale(LOT). Results showed that 1) the SWLS was affected by factors such as the information exchanges among group members and the emotional/ psychological burden, 2) there was no relationship between the SWLS and overall group satisfaction, and 3) the SWLS and the negative emotion scores of the MES were significantly related to the organizational characteristics such as openness, democratic decision making, and social gathering. Especially, the results showed that various aspects of the communal life/activity were significantly related with the subjective well-being even after factoring out the effects of personality variable (i.e., the optimism that measured from the LOT) and demographic variables(i.e., age and income). The implications of these findings were discussed.