Exposure to authoritarian values leads to lower positive affect, higher negative affect, and higher meaning in life

Psychological richness offers a third path to a good life

Psychologists have long debated the relative benefits of a happy life versus a meaningful life, assuming these to be only two major dimensions of a good life. Here, we propose an alternative: a psychologically rich life, or a life filled with diverse, interesting experiences. Psychologically rich lives not only feel different from meaningful or happy lives, but also have different correlates. Unlike happiness and meaning in life, openness to experience is the strongest personality predictor of a psychologically rich life. While happy and meaningful lives are associated with conservative worldviews, psychologically rich lives are not. Instead, such lives are characterized by attributional complexity, holism, and unusual perspective-changing experiences. This psychologically rich life, we suggest, offers a third path to the good life.