What does research about experienced well-being learn us? – Chapter 37

Research about well-being revolves around one survey question, which was considered a measure of happiness and was addressed to the remembering self: “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?” In his experiments, Kahneman found that the remembering self was not the best witness, so he decided to focus on the well-being on the experiencing self.

There are numerous experiences we would prefer to continue instead of stop, including psychical and mental pleasures. Example are being in a ‘flow’ (absorbed in a task) and playing with toys. The resistance to interruption is an indicator of having a good time.

Together with other specialists Kahneman developed a measure of the well-being of the experiencing self. Experience sampling seemed a good option, but it is burdensome and expensive. This led to the development of the ‘Day Reconstruction Method’ (DRM). Most moments in life can be classified as ultimately negative or positive. The American participants experienced negative feelings approximately 19% of the time. This percentage is called the U-index. The advantage of the U-index is that it is not based on a rating scale but on an objective measurement of time. It can also be computed for activities.

A remarkable finding was the extent of inequality in the distribution of emotional pain. Half of the participants went through a whole day without experiencing unpleasant episodes. A significant number of participants experienced negative feelings for a big part of the day. This suggests that a minority of the population does most of the emotional suffering.

The mood of people at any moment depends on their overall happiness and temperament. Emotional well-being also fluctuates over the week and day. The mood of the moment depends mostly on the current situation. Situational factors are the most important. We are usually focused on our current activities and environment, but sometimes the quality of subjective experience is dominated by recurrent thoughts (being in love, grieving). However, in most cases we draw pain and pleasure from what currently is happening.

The findings have implications for society and individuals. People have some control over their use of time. A number of people could arrange their lives to spend more time doing things they like and less time doing things that make them unhappy. Some aspects of life have more effect on the evaluation of someone’s life than on the experience of living, like educational attainment. Bad health, living with children and religious participation have a stronger adverse effect on experienced well-being than on life evaluation. Does money make us happy? Being poor is depressing and being rich is satisfying, but having a lot of money does not improve experienced well-being.