Sunday, November 1, 2015

Kahneman (2011), “Experienced Well-Being”

Daniel Kahneman, “Experienced Well-Being.” Chapter 37, pages 391-397, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. 

• “Happiness” conflates experienced utility with remembered utility. Questions about subjective well-being probably do not map well with experienced utility. In a previous chapter (chapter 35, pages 377-385), Kahneman indicates that people’s memories of a past event tend to neglect the duration of the event (which is quite important as the event is being experienced), and that their assessment of a past event primarily will reflect the average of the peak level (of pain, say, for an aversive episode) and the state at the end of the event. 

• How to measure experienced, moment-by-moment, utility? One method (“experience sampling”) is to interrupt people at random times throughout the day, and to ask them what they are doing and how they are feeling about it. The Day Reconstruction Method provides another measure, where people are asked to map in detail their previous day’s activities, and their emotional state at the time of the activities. 

• The U-index measures the proportion of time people spend in an unpleasant state. The U-index exhibits significant variance: “a small fraction of the population does most of the suffering [p. 394].”

• You probably can improve your personal U-index by switching your leisure pursuits away from passive forms (watching television) to active forms (socializing). 

• Policy might be able to reduce the overall U-index, perhaps by encouraging socializing for elderly people or by reducing commuting times. A small decrease in the percentage of time spent in an unpleasant state is quite significant in terms of suffering averted. 

• Poverty can bring unhappiness, but money does not add to experienced well-being for household incomes above $75,000.

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