I feel like the issues with “How satisfied are you with your life, on a scale of 0 to 10?” run even a bit deeper than indicated. The series “The Americans” is about a married couple of Soviet spies living a painful and difficult life in America during the Cold War. The wife still believes in the mission, her husband not so much (but continues doing the job for the sake of his wife). Let’s say the wife rates her life satisfaction 9⁄10 because she convinced herself that she’s bravely doing highly important work. The husband rates his life satisfaction 1⁄10. They’d both score about the same in terms of more objective metrics like socioeconomic status, how much time they spend on hobbies or with their kids, how much stress they have, etc. But they interpret things differently because the wife ascribes meaning to her hardships and is proud of her accomplishments, while the husband feels trapped and like he wasted his life and endangered his children for no good reason.
I feel like the issues with “How satisfied are you with your life, on a scale of 0 to 10?” run even a bit deeper than indicated. The series “The Americans” is about a married couple of Soviet spies living a painful and difficult life in America during the Cold War. The wife still believes in the mission, her husband not so much (but continues doing the job for the sake of his wife). Let’s say the wife rates her life satisfaction 9⁄10 because she convinced herself that she’s bravely doing highly important work. The husband rates his life satisfaction 1⁄10. They’d both score about the same in terms of more objective metrics like socioeconomic status, how much time they spend on hobbies or with their kids, how much stress they have, etc. But they interpret things differently because the wife ascribes meaning to her hardships and is proud of her accomplishments, while the husband feels trapped and like he wasted his life and endangered his children for no good reason.