Book review: measuring happiness: the economics of wellbeing

This book examines the evolution of happiness research, considering the famous “Easterlin Paradox,” which found that people’s average life satisfaction didn’t seem to depend on their income. But they question whether happiness research can measure what needs to be measured. Laura Kudrna argues this book is well worth a read for its excellent coverage of much of the happiness literature from large surveys, as well as the interesting arguments put forth about how we should interpret this evidence

More years, less yawns: fresh evidence on tiredness by age and other factors

Objectives. It is commonplace for people to complain about being tired. There have been actually few studies of tiredness in large general population samples, and where studies do exist, the measures often rely on external assessments. We use a diary-based method to overcome these limitations in a representative sample of U.S. residents. Methods. Data come from the 2010 American Time Use Survey. Around 13,000 respondents provided a diary about the prior day and rated how tired they felt during selected activities. Regression analysis is used to explain variance in tiredness by age. Results. Regression analysis reveals that tiredness decreases with age. This relationship exists when we control for hours of sleep, gender, self-rated health, ethnic group, number of children, marital status, employment status, level of education, and the amount of time participants spent doing tiring activities. Discussion. Contrary to much previous research, tiredness decreases with age. People who are more than 65 years of age are almost one point on a 0–6 scale less tired than people aged between 15 and 24. Clinical implications and methodological limitations are discussed

The measure matters: an investigation of evaluative and experience-based measures of wellbeing in time use data

Measures of subjective wellbeing (SWB) are used to understand how people think and feel about their lives and experiences. But the measure used matters to conclusions about how well people’s lives are going. This research compares life evaluations and experienced SWB using nationally representative time use diaries, advancing previous research because diaries are less subject to recall biases than other, more popular methods. Analyses of over 20,000 US residents in 2012–2013 show life evaluations are more closely associated with positive and negative affect than experienced meaningfulness. Women have higher SWB than men except for negative affect, older age groups have higher SWB than middle age groups except for experienced meaningfulness, and younger age groups report the lowest experienced meaning. The unemployed have low life evaluations but experiences of SWB are similar across employment groups. A complete picture of SWB requires a complete set of measures

Without my medal on my mind: counterfactual thinking and other determinants of athlete emotions

How achievement makes people feel depends upon counterfactual thoughts about what could have been. One body of evidence for this comes from studies of observer ratings of Olympians' happiness, which suggests that category-based counterfactual thoughts affect the perceived happiness of Olympians. Silver medallists are less happy than bronze medallists, arguably because silver medallists think about how they could have won gold, and bronze medallists feel lucky to be on the podium at all. We contribute to this literature by showing that the effect of category-based counterfactual thoughts on Olympians' happiness depends on the margin by which athletes secured their medal. Although gold and bronze medallists appeared happier the better they performed, silver medallists were less happy when they were closer to winning gold. This suggests silver medallists feel disappointed relative to gold medallists but that bronzes do not feel particularly fortunate relative to non-medal winners. Teams were rated as happier than individual athletes and Olympians happier than Paralympians. Observers' ethnic and gender similarity to athletes negatively influence happiness ratings; whilst observers' self-reported happiness has a negligible effect on ratings. We integrate these findings with prior literature on counterfactual thinking and the determinants of happiness, and suggest avenues for future research

What is happiness? Should citizens choose or should we simply measure it more accurately?

Your question sounds very pertinent, Charlie Brown, now that monitoring happiness is a serious policy objective. How we define happiness is key, as it will inform and guide policy interventions. But, still, how should we define it? Perhaps as the absence of pain, in the wake of Epicurean notions? Or as maximising pleasure, following the utilitarian tradition? Or maybe as the pursuit of purpose beyond hedonism, echoing Aristotle? To some degree, all the above seem to matter. So, Charlie Brown, the issue is perhaps how best to ‘summarise’ happiness without assigning too much or too little weight to any aspect therein

Reference Groups and Relative Effects on Well‐Being

Economic growth may not improve society if people compare their achievements to others in relative ways that detract from well‐being. But who are these others and what economic dimensions matter? This research applied a p‐value ranking approach from genetics research to tackle the issue of reference group selection. Data from over 30,000 British and American adults were analyzed in nearly 800 multi‐level models. Over 300 measures of reference group socio‐economic status and eight measures of well‐being were used. The results showed that reference groups based on geography and age, perceptions of those in “society,” and rank wealth were most consistently associated with well‐being. Measures less consistently associated with well‐being used averages, medians, and proportions in states and local authorities without demographic sub‐groups. Future researchers should consider the consistently associated dimensions of reference groups when constructing relative measures

Speaking to hearts before minds? public health messages aligned with people’s political intuitions may not increase vaccination uptake

What influences people’s attitudes towards vaccination? Laura Kudrna and Kelly Ann Schmidtke report on an experiment seeking to determine whether messages aligned with people’s politics influenced their intentions to take up the influenza vaccine. They find that the messages had no substantial effect

It's Not Me It's You

This research looks at the relationships of money, education and work with happiness. It focusses upon how these relationships differ according to how happiness is measured and the 'reference group' considered - that is, the people to whom we compare or have knowledge of in some form. Acknowledgements: This research was funded by the Nuffield Foundation

Changing the message to change the response: psychological framing effects during Covid-19

Laura Kudrna and Kelly Ann Schmidtke discuss new research on the effects of message framing in the context of COVID-19. Specifically, they ask whether campaign messages framed as being about ‘saving lives’ yield different responses to those framed as ‘preventing death’

Please award this degree, even though it is likely to make others miserable – and me too: an investigation of the relationships of absolute and relative socio-economic status with subjective wellbeing in the United States and England

This thesis argues that we can better understand the relationship between socio-economic status and subjective wellbeing (SWB) by considering more carefully to whom and how people make comparisons and what is meant by SWB. It questions existing knowledge with new empirical evidence and frameworks for both ‘reference groups’ – the people to whom we (may) make comparisons – and SWB. These contributions are situated within existing social comparison, norm and identity theories from economics and psychology. Using two large datasets from the United States and England, over 300 reference group measures are created. Nearly 4K models are analysed, adjusting for multiple comparisons. Although the results should be interpreted cautiously due to issues of endogeneity, they suggest that upward comparisons to others’ socio-economic attainment do matter for SWB and are almost always negative after accounting for individual attainment and multicollinearity. Comparisons to others of a similar age and to perceptions of those in ‘society’ matter most consistently. Socio-economic attainment in and of itself, however, is not sufficient to improve how people feel even if it improves their thoughts about how well their lives are going, and it is difficult to escape the negative effects of relative socio-economic status. Negative effects are evident across the distributions of SWB and absolute socio-economic status, for both women and men, and across age groups. It is not possible to dismiss the idea that comparisons to others’ socio-economic attainment do not matter – and yet, achieving socio-economically in absolute terms does not guarantee a life free of misery and full of happy and meaningful moments, either, even if this should be the ultimate aim of people and social policies. These results can inform normative debates about optimal resource distributions in societies and underscore the importance of considering how well people are doing socio-economically in relative and not only absolute terms