Advancing wellbeing research: would Americans be happier if they lived like Australians?

Abstract

International comparisons of emotional wellbeing rarely account for the situational and social context of the experience of emotions (such as happiness or pleasantness) associated with everyday activities. A small number of studies have revealed the emotional context of the daily time-schedules of Americans. Knowing the emotions people associate with patterns of experience opens up the possibility of modelling how national emotional wellbeing might change, should policy persuade people to alter their routines. We compare time-use patterns in two countries with relatively similar cultural and institutional contexts, Australia and the United States, to see how people in the United States might feel if they altered their routines to live more like Australians. We find that such a change could yield a reduction in unpleasant time in certain categories, such as paid work, but at the cost of losing more pleasant time in other activities, including socialising. We also find that men and women are likely to have different responses to policies that alter general behaviour. This paper highlights the need for future research to explore the emotional diversity, emotion work, and gender gaps in the emotional wellbeing of nations.

Reliability, Validity, and Variability of the Subjective Well-Being Questions in the 2010 American Time Use Survey

“…Thus, the small to moderate variability across the subjective well-being measures as well as across the three activities and the high correlations across activities suggest that the respondent's emotional reports on the three randomly selected activities are closely related to individual-specific characteristics, such as positiveness. Consistent with this result, Patulny and Fisher (2012) found that the context as well as activities themselves were associated with affective responses.…”

Exposing the “Wellbeing Gap” Between American Men and Women: Revelations From the Sociology of Emotion Surveys

“…Kahneman and Krueger’s (2006) approach is useful for contextualising subjective wellbeing; or establishing how different people feel in different situations, whilst doing different things. It has been applied, for example, to studies contrasting the emotional wellbeing of men and women in countries such as Australia and the USA (Patulny & Fisher, 2012). However, their approach does not address the potentially critical question of which emotions and types of affect are most relevant to understanding differences in unpleasantness across activities and groups, such as men and women.…”