2. WHAT IS HAPPINESS

eudamonic vs hedonic happiness

eudamonic human flourishing or living a fufilling life

hedonic happiness about meaning purpose and personal growth

PS approach

this came from the dissatisfaction from hedonistic and utilitarinistic ideas

not allowing for happiness comparisions focusing on peoples preferences choices and desires and if these are met

SWB approach

by easterlin and leydon focusing on the idea that happiness is a real experience that can be measured and analysed directly

this can be used using different appraoches, so is not monolithic

it depends on how people interpret a question leading to misunderstandigns or cultural and linguistic differences

south america report higher SWB then communist countries

in french happiness has a deeper meaning then in english

your 5 may be different to my 5

this isnt fully accepted in mainstream economics:

  • epistemplogical critisms- happiness is unmeasurable

  • practical- biases especially when used as a dependent variable

  • disciplinary- doesnt fit in with economcis

satisfaction with life scales

rate agreement 1-7 with each statement

  1. in most ways my life is close to ideal

  2. the conditions of my life are excellent

  3. i am satisfied with my life

  4. so far i have gotten the most important things i want in life

  5. if i could live my life over i would change almost nothing

life satisfaction is the average response, with the inclusion fo 5 often beign critisised

cantrils ladder

commonly used eg in the GWP

imagine a ladder where would you place your self, 1-10

affect mood measure

seperates measures for positive and negative effect

important to measure both as high positive effect isnt necessarily associated with low negative effect

balance scale

one of the earliest attempts to measure wellbeing, by assessing the positive and negative effects seperatly

asked about recent emotional experiece and wellbeing

doesnt capture deeper aspects such as eudamonia

balanced emotional state might not be satisfied with life

psychological wellbeing scale

multi item questionaire aimed at measuring ryffs conceptulisation of eudamonia

questions about personal growth, purpose in life, environment and self acceptance

experience sampling

collects real time data on individuals emotions behaviours and thoughts in natural enviornments

strenghts

  • high ecological validility

  • minimise memory distortions

  • captures variability in experience

  • contextual insights

  • personal and flexible

weaknesses

  • fatigue

  • reactivity effect due to constant monitoring

  • data collection costs

  • sampling bias

  • short term focus

day reconstruction method

asseses how people spend their time and experience in activities combining time budgeting management and experience sampling to minimise recall baises while providing detailed daily account

  1. diary of episodes of previous days using location and social interactions

  2. affective experience measruement- reporting emotions for each episode

  3. improved accuracy

with data from 909 employed women found the hedonic treadmill that happiness fluctuates daily

they found that influences of SWB are time pressure, job security, sleep and that negative emotions peak in the morning, tiredness follows a v shape and that the younger start the day more tired but then catch up midday and that people enjoy spending time with children, personality traits have a strong influence

domain satisfaction

how people are satisfied with seperate domains of life eg job health finacial relationship and satisfaction

they create an index of overall satisfaction by combining the different satisfaction from different domain

implications

positive illusions eg personal values and subjective interpretations shape overall life satisfaction in ways that domain scores cant fully capture

eg 2 people with the same domain scores may still rate overall life satisfaction differently depending on personality mindset or goals

influences on accounting

  • chronically accessible information- LT

  • temporaily accessible information-ST

when we have recent positive experiences we rate our life higher

the issue

  1. objective happiness

    how happy people actually are

  2. subjective happiness

    how happy people think they are

  3. measured subjective happiness

    how happy people say they are


we want to know 1 but we actually observe 3

can objective and true subjective happiness differ

no how happy a person thinks they are is how happy they are so we dont need to worry about accuratly measuring subjective happiness

yes if happiness is a real sensation objective happiness might differ from subjective happiness, a person could beleive their relativly unhappy but actually be experiencing more pleasure then others

subjective happiness is measured on a scale this is arbitary reflecting conventions in how people think about 0-10 sclaes

peoples ranking in subjective happiness differs from their ranking in objective happiness

these interpretations might differ due to

  • scale is arbitary

  • people use reference points to place self on scale

peoples bounds of 0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest you can be also differs


if subjective and objective happiness are equal this implies

  • social comparision effect- others income reduces my happiness

  • adaptation- increasing my income increases my objective happiness more in the ST then the LT

if subjective happiness is a biased reflection of objective happiness this implies

  • social comparision effect- other people having higher income raises standards by which i interpret the scale leading to placing lower on the scale without a change in objective happiness

  • adaptation- after income increases objective happiness shifts to a permanent higher level but gradually updating standard of imaginable happienss leading to different interpretation of the scale


but say our rank is based on social comparisions we will see similar distribution of self reported happiness but we dont suggesting that evaluation of own happiness is made partly on absolute basis

but this doesnt rule out the concept that ratings also contain a compoment of comparision vs perceived normality

so we might underestimate differences in happiness between groups or within individuals over time

but we can still identify inter group or inter temporal differences in happiness and study their determinants

language differences

there isnt a direct translation for happiness

tanzania ranked 2/70 on general happiness but 70th on the life satisfaction

as the back translation differed for happiness

no notion

how happy a person thinks they are has no meaning if they never think about the question

there are some no responses or dont know responses

8/10 americans think about if they enjoy their life every week

untruthful reporting of subjective happiness

people might lie about how they feel

  • strategic resons

  • social desirability

but these biases arent an issue if everyone lies equally but there is an issue when some groups are more biased then others

in western countries there is stronger expectation that people should be happy

in east asian countries there is less social expectations about happiness

links to the east asian happiness gap

reliabiltiy

if it yields the same score when repeated under the same conditions

often SWB we look at the test-retest correlations

  • measuring SWB among a sample at 2 points in time

  • should expect correlation to be strong

validity

do responses truly measure the supposed concept

checking if responses correspond to objective measures of the same thing

as subjective happiness is truly private information that cant be observed by researchers but we observe objective outcomes that are plausibly associated with happiness such as

  • biological measures eg physical stress- happier people show more duchenne smiles

  • brain activity- happier people have more activity in areas like the left prefrontal contexts associated with positive emotions

  • disgnosis of depressions

  • current bad or good life circumstances

  • future behaviour - lower self reported happiness more risk of suicide

self reported happiness should correlate with these variables

multi item sclae

increases reliability and validility

reduces random errors

but some scores have clearer meaning than others

influences on results

current mood effects

schwarz 1987

respondents giving a life satisfaction survey asked to photocopy a piece of paper with a dime placed on the copy for half those who received the dime reported higher life satisfaction


question order effects

deaton 2011

life satisfaction questions before or after politics those asked after reported lower life satisfaction

this can be reduced by placing buffer questions in between SWB questions and influential questions

psychological factors

  • attention and availability- chronically accessible, current emotions situationally prime

  • relevance and values- proritisation of different life aspects dependent on culture personality and social values

  • judgements and standards- shaped by social comparisions aspirations and goals

  • top down biases- cognitive biases deviate from reality but can be adaptive eg personality

other biases

lower life satisfaction on online surveys rather then telephone

higher life satisfaction when the interviewer is disabled

do these biases matter

depends on type of bias and data used

  • some are randomly distribution- large samples can balance out, measusrment error results in attenuation strength of correlation between life satisfaction and other variables will be underestimated

  • some biases are systematic- eg question order effects, can be randomised

theres an issue when this bias is systematic for some groups but not for others

can SWB responses be interpreted cardinally

scales are ordinal observations can be ranked, not cardinal

we cant use this ordinal data to calculate means but we can transform it to be cardinal

lots of SWB data treats SWB data as cardinal this is good for comparisons but is controversial

it yields more stable and meaningful results

satisfaction scores predict behaviours in mostly linear fashion supporting the notion that differences between scales are equivalent

this implies that cardinalisation leads to only small baises

where is SWB data collected

  • organisations - publically available

  • individual rsearchers- not always publically available

official UK measure

personal wellbeing data is collected by the ONS since 2011

with questions developed in consultation with research

we have 4 questions designed to capture 4 components of SWB

  • Life satisfaction: Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, where 0 is "not at all satisfied" and 10 is "completely satisfied"?

  • Eudaimonia: Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile, where 0 is "not at all worthwhile" and 10 is "completely worthwhile"?

  • Positive affect: Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday, where 0 is "not at all happy" and 10 is "completely happy"?

  • Negative affect: On a scale where 0 is "not at all anxious" and 10 is "completely anxious", overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

correlations between different SWB measures

diner et al

responses to different life satisfaction questions are highly correlated

individuals give similar resposnes to different items on satisfaction with life scales

individuals respond to different life satisfaction scales have moderate to high correlations

self reported satsifaction questions moderatly correlated with other SWB measures

eg countries with higher avarage life satisfaction tend to have high average self reported happiness

correlation between affect and life satisfaction depends on culture- stronger in more individual individualstic societies