**1. Introduction**

Over the past few decades, a grea<sup>t</sup> number of studies have linked personality traits with well-being [1–3]. Among the Big Five personality traits, conscientiousness reflects a set of characteristics describing industriousness, orderliness, goal-directed, planning, impulse control, delayed gratification, active coping, and the propensity to adhere to societal rules and norms [4], which is related to a serial of social adaptive outcomes, such as better work performance [5], higher career self-efficacy [6], positive interpersonal relationships [7] and higher academic effort [8] or achievement [9]. Notably, conscientiousness was found to be closely linked with an individual's mental and physical health [10]. Some studies have also proposed and preliminarily found a reciprocal relationship between conscientiousness and subjective and physical well-being [11,12]. However, existing studies provide only limited evidence on the reciprocal relationship. The present study sought to test whether there is a reciprocal relationship between conscientiousness and subjective and physical well-being among Chinese undergraduate students.

#### *1.1. Relation between Conscientiousness and Subjective Well-Being*

Subjective well-being refers to the personal evaluations of positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction [13]. A large number of cross-sectional studies have shown that conscientious individuals tend to experience more frequent positive affect, greater life satisfaction, and less frequent negative affect as compared to less conscientious individuals [14–17]. Individuals high in conscientiousness are more effective at regulating

**Citation:** Hu, Y.; Wang, Z.; Fan, Q. The Relationship between Conscientiousness and Well-Being among Chinese Undergraduate Students: A Cross-Lagged Study. *IJERPH* **2022**, *19*, 13565. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph192013565

Academic Editors: V. K. Kumar and Jasmin Tahmaseb-McConatha

Received: 1 August 2022 Accepted: 14 October 2022 Published: 19 October 2022

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negative affect [18], and are less likely to suffer from depression and anxiety disorders [19]. Recently, a longitudinal study observed that individuals who were initially conscientious subsequently report increased subjective well-being, and those with high initial levels of subjective well-being subsequently become more conscientious [12]. In addition, a longitudinal study from Specht et al. [20] suggested that life satisfaction prospectively predicted improvements in conscientiousness. These research findings indicate that there is a reciprocal relationship between conscientiousness and subjective well-being.

#### *1.2. Relation between Conscientiousness and Physical Well-Being*

Moreover, studies have investigated the relationship between conscientiousness and physical well-being, conceptualized as the absence of illness or physical symptoms, and maintaining normal physical functioning [3,21]. Conscientiousness was observed to be negatively associated with inflammation [22] and risks of chronic illness, such as sciatica, stroke, hypertension, and diabetes [23–25]. Accumulating evidence has consistently suggested that conscientiousness is a protective factor against physical health problems [26–28]. Recent findings from empirical studies have shown that individuals high in conscientiousness tend to report better physical health status [10,29,30]. A small number of longitudinal studies on the influence of conscientiousness on physical well-being have suggested that an increase in conscientiousness predicts improved self-reported health [31–34]. Roberts et al. [11] proposed that, similar to subjective well-being, there is a reciprocal relationship between conscientiousness and physical health. That is, favorable health behaviors and life paths that contribute to physical health resulting partially from being conscientious, may conversely facilitate increased conscientiousness. However, few empirical studies have examined the influence of physical well-being on conscientiousness, and thus, the reciprocal relationship between conscientiousness and physical well-being remains unclear.
