Across a sample of 123 countries, we examined the association between the fulfillment of needs and subjective well-being (SWB), including life evaluation, positive feelings, and negative feelings. Need fulfillment was consistently associated with SWB across world regions. Life evaluation was most associated with fulfilling basic needs; positive feelings were most associated with social and respect needs; and negative feelings were most associated with basic, respect, and autonomy needs. Societal need fulfillment predicted SWB, particularly for life evaluation, beyond individuals' fulfillment of their own needs, indicating the desirability of living in a flourishing society. In addition, the associations of SWB with the fulfillment of specific needs were largely independent of whether other needs were fulfilled. These trends persisted when household income was taken into account. The emergent ordering of need fulfillment for psychosocial needs were fairly consistent across country conditions, but the fulfillment of basic and safety needs were contingent on country membership.

Despite the widely held belief that men are more narcissistic than women, there has been no systematic review to establish the magnitude, variability across measures and settings, and stability over time of this gender difference. Drawing on the biosocial approach to social role theory, a meta-analysis performed for Study 1 found that men tended to be more narcissistic than women (d = .26; k = 355 studies; N = 470,846). This gender difference remained stable in U.S. college student cohorts over time (from 1990 to 2013) and across different age groups. Study 1 also investigated gender differences in three facets of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) to reveal that the narcissism gender difference is driven by the Exploitative/Entitlement facet (d = .29; k = 44 studies; N = 44,108) and Leadership/Authority facet (d = .20; k = 40 studies; N = 44,739); whereas the gender difference in Grandiose/Exhibitionism (d = .04; k = 39 studies; N = 42,460) was much smaller. We further investigated a less-studied form of narcissism called vulnerable narcissism-which is marked by low self-esteem, neuroticism, and introversion-to find that (in contrast to the more commonly studied form of narcissism found in the DSM and the NPI) men and women did not differ on vulnerable narcissism (d = -.04; k = 42 studies; N = 46,735). Study 2 used item response theory to rule out the possibility that measurement bias accounts for observed gender differences in the three facets of the NPI (N = 19,001). Results revealed that observed gender differences were not explained by measurement bias and thus can be interpreted as true sex differences. Discussion focuses on the implications for the biosocial construction model of gender differences, for the etiology of narcissism, for clinical applications, and for the role of narcissism in helping to explain gender differences in leadership and aggressive behavior. Readers are warned against overapplying small effect sizes to perpetuate gender stereotypes.

Numerous studies show a link between leisure engagement and subjective well-being (SWB). Drawing on common experiential features of leisure, psychological need theories, and bottom-up models of SWB, we suggest that leisure engagement influences SWB via leisure satisfaction. We examine the proposed cross-sectional relations and mediation model using random-effects meta-analyses that include all available populations. To provide a stronger test of causal influence, we also examine longitudinal relations between leisure satisfaction and SWB and effects of experimental leisure interventions on SWB using random effects meta-analyses of all available populations. Findings based on 37 effect sizes and 11,834 individuals reveal that leisure engagement and SWB are moderately associated (inverse-variance weighted r = .26) and mediated by leisure satisfaction. Cross-lagged regression analyses of longitudinal studies, controlling for prior SWB, reveal bottom-up effects of leisure satisfaction on SWB (β = .15) and top-down effects of SWB on leisure satisfaction (β = .16). Experimental studies reveal that leisure interventions enhance SWB (d = 1.02). Compared with working samples, retired samples exhibit a stronger relation between leisure engagement and SWB, and between leisure satisfaction and SWB. Measures of the frequency and diversity of leisure engagement are more strongly associated with SWB than measures of time spent in leisure. Overall, although not minimizing top-down influences, results are consistent with bottom-up models of SWB and suggest that the leisure domain is a potentially important target for enhancing SWB.