One thing that occurred to me is that, if people’s subjective well-being was determined by their sense of their positioning relative to others, there are potential interventions we could do. For example, we could have an educational campaign to let people know about others who are less well off than them. Or we could encourage people to adopt a wide variety of different hierarchies, such that more people can be near the top of what they perceive to be the relevant metric.
I haven’t really thought of this before! At first this felt like “cheating” in some way, but on reflection it seems more reasonable. Maybe this is what most gratitude interventions get at?
Thanks for writing this very interesting report.
One thing that occurred to me is that, if people’s subjective well-being was determined by their sense of their positioning relative to others, there are potential interventions we could do. For example, we could have an educational campaign to let people know about others who are less well off than them. Or we could encourage people to adopt a wide variety of different hierarchies, such that more people can be near the top of what they perceive to be the relevant metric.
I haven’t really thought of this before! At first this felt like “cheating” in some way, but on reflection it seems more reasonable. Maybe this is what most gratitude interventions get at?