Which way to well-being: “More of the same” or “trying something novel”? The association of comfortable and experimental behavior styles to well-being

In this paper we describe the development of a measurement of tendency towards displaying a comfortable behavior style, and/or an experimental behavior style across two studies. A comfortable behavioral style involves sticking to habits and routines, while an experimental behavior style involves being inclined to try out new ideas, actions or experiences. Study 1 involved developing the items, and determining the factor structure of the items using a student sample (N = 189, 85 male and 104 female, aged between 18 and 51). An exploratory factor analysis yielded the expected two factor structure, reflecting factors for a comfortable behavior style, and an experimental behavior style. Study 2 went on to further validate the measures via a second exploratory factor analysis, and establish the relationship of these measures to a variety of well-being outcomes using a sample collected via Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 302, 159 male and 138 female, aged between 18 and 68). The two factor structure was confirmed, and these measures were found to be related to outcomes including satisfaction with life, positive and negative affect, self-concept clarity, and sensation seeking. The potential applications for these measures are discussed.