Relationships among self-esteem, parent attachment, peer attachment, and life satisfaction in Thai undergraduates

Abstract

Life satisfaction is an essential element for the wellbeing of humans. Several studies have found some common fundamental factors that affect people’s life satisfaction, such as self-esteem, parent attachment, and peer attachment. In this study, we focused on emerging adult group between the ages of 18 to 25 years old, which is the suggested age ranges for people to be experiencing life transition from adolescents to adulthood. During this transition, we suspect that this group of people might be more vulnerable to various threats to their level of life satisfaction. We aimed to find empirical evidences of how the three fundamental factors (self-esteem, parent attachment, and peer attachment) are related to Thai undergraduates’ life satisfaction. The results found strong positive relationships between life satisfaction and each fundamental variable, and the variance in life satisfaction was significantly explained by all three factors (R2 = 0.423). This concluded that self-esteem, parent attachment, and peer attachment are the three important factors that determined emerging adults’ life satisfaction, and the impact ranged from self-esteem, parent attachment, and peer attachment, respectively. Limitations and implications of our findings and potential directions for future research will be discussed.