Monday, November 11, 2019

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.

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