To complement Michael’s reply, I think there’s been some decent work related to two of your points, which happens to all be by the same group.
I would be more optimistic of measurements based on revealed preferences, i.e. what people actually choose given several options when they are well-informed or what people think of their past choices in hindsight (or at least what they say they would choose in hypothetical situations, but this is less reliable).
In Benjamin et al. (2012; 2014a) they find that what people choose is well predicted by what they think would make them happier or more satisfied with their life—so there may not be too much tension between these measures as is. However, if you’re interested in a measure of wellbeing more in line with people’s revealed preferences, then it seems your best bet may still lie within the realm of SWB. See Benjamin et al., (2014b) whose title hints at the thrust of their argument “Beyond Happiness and Satisfaction: Toward Well-Being Indices Based on Stated Preference” -- but note, that their approach doesn’t mean abandoning subjective wellbeing as the approach is still based on asking people about their life. They discuss their approach to SWB more in Benjamin et al., (2021).
I suspect that the meaning of the answer might differ substantially between people in different cultures and/or be normalized w.r.t. some complicated implicit baseline, such as what a person thinks they should “expect” or “deserve”.
The difference in meaning of SWB questions is still, as we note in Section 5, an area of active exploration. For instance, some recent work finds that people will respond to ambiguously worded questions about their life’s wellbeing to include considerations of how their family is doing (Benjamin et al., 2021, which contains a few other interesting findings!).
I wouldn’t be surprised if we discover that we need to do some fine-tuning to make these questions more precise, but that that to me seems like the normal hard work of iterative refinement, instead of an indictment of the whole enterprise!
I think there’s a big difference between asking people to rate their present life satisfaction and asking people what would make them more satisfied with their life. The latter is a comparison: either between several options or between future and present, depending on the phrasing of the questions. In a comparison it makes sense people report their relative preferences. On the other hand, the former is in some ill-posed reference frame. So I would be much more optimistic about a variant of WELLBY based on the former than on the latter.
Hello, Vanessa
To complement Michael’s reply, I think there’s been some decent work related to two of your points, which happens to all be by the same group.
In Benjamin et al. (2012; 2014a) they find that what people choose is well predicted by what they think would make them happier or more satisfied with their life—so there may not be too much tension between these measures as is. However, if you’re interested in a measure of wellbeing more in line with people’s revealed preferences, then it seems your best bet may still lie within the realm of SWB. See Benjamin et al., (2014b) whose title hints at the thrust of their argument “Beyond Happiness and Satisfaction: Toward Well-Being Indices Based on Stated Preference” -- but note, that their approach doesn’t mean abandoning subjective wellbeing as the approach is still based on asking people about their life. They discuss their approach to SWB more in Benjamin et al., (2021).
The difference in meaning of SWB questions is still, as we note in Section 5, an area of active exploration. For instance, some recent work finds that people will respond to ambiguously worded questions about their life’s wellbeing to include considerations of how their family is doing (Benjamin et al., 2021, which contains a few other interesting findings!).
I wouldn’t be surprised if we discover that we need to do some fine-tuning to make these questions more precise, but that that to me seems like the normal hard work of iterative refinement, instead of an indictment of the whole enterprise!
Hi Joel,
Thank you for the informative reply!
I think there’s a big difference between asking people to rate their present life satisfaction and asking people what would make them more satisfied with their life. The latter is a comparison: either between several options or between future and present, depending on the phrasing of the questions. In a comparison it makes sense people report their relative preferences. On the other hand, the former is in some ill-posed reference frame. So I would be much more optimistic about a variant of WELLBY based on the former than on the latter.