Sherman and Shavit (2018) on Creative Effort at Work

Arie Sherman and Tal Shavit, “The Thrill of Creative Effort at Work: An Empirical Study on Work, Creative Effort and Well-Being.” Journal of Happiness Studies 19(7): 2049–2069, October 2018 [pdf].

• Maybe work isn’t just a means to the end of having money? Could it be that there are some non-pecuniary benefits of work? 

• Sherman and Shavit suggest that workers might invest creative effort to build up their “hedonic capital.” 

• They survey 922 Israeli adults who are salaried employees (that is, not self-employed). The idea is to see if those who invest more creative effort at work (for the purpose of making work more enjoyable) have higher subjective well-being. 

• The authors check four measures (on 0-to-10 scales) of subjective well-being: overall satisfaction; meaning and purpose; positive feelings; and, negative feelings. 

• The results indicate that creative effort (self-rated on a 1-to-7 scale) at work improves subjective well-being (SWB) when SWB is measured as life satisfaction, meaning and purpose, or positive affect. 

• Creative and intellectual work raises SWB. 

• Good health and financial satisfaction raise SWB; income does not aid meaning and purpose. 

• Having children does not raise SWB but does add meaning and purpose. 

• There are U-shaped age effects on SWB and positive affect (that is, there's a trough in midlife), but not for meaning and purpose. 

• Good health, financial satisfaction, and religiosity all seem to reduce negative affect.

Lindqvist, Östling, and Cesarini (2018) on Lottery Wealth and Happiness

Erik Lindqvist, Robert Östling, and David Cesarini, “Long-run Effects of Lottery Wealth on Psychological Well-being.” NBER Working Paper No. 24667, May 2018 [pdf of a similar version here]. 

• Adaptation might suggest that the (exaggerated?) hedonic benefits from a monetary windfall will be short-lived. 

• Lottery data can help us identify the extent to which wealth causes increased happiness or life satisfaction, in both the short and the long run. 

• The authors look at Swedish lottery winners 5 to 22 years after their stroke of good fortune. 

• The estimation undertaken here of how much happiness flows from wealth compares very similar people: they are all lottery winners, but the amounts they won differ. 

• Happiness and Life Satisfaction are reported on an 11-point scale. They are highly positively correlated, though are influenced differently by wealth. Other variables collected are Mental Health, and Financial Life Satisfaction.

• Life Satisfaction is raised by an extra $100,000, and the effect is lasting. 

• The source of the increased Life Satisfaction is improved Financial Life Satisfaction. (Yes, a financial windfall improves one's financial satisfaction!)

• Happiness and Mental Health are not improved (in the long run) by a lottery win. 

• This research was all pre-registered: opportunities to p-hack are minimal; N ≈ 3350 

•  Lottery winners in this sample tend to behave prudently – they don't squander their winnings in a short period of time.