Using memories to assess the intrapersonal comparability of wellbeing reports

Feeling Good Is Feeling Better

“…1), but alternative avenues are possible. Theoretically, if happy and unhappy people use their scale differently (as recently conjectured by Kaiser, 2022), and if the population actually becomes happier over time, this rescaling process could explain the patterns we observed and help solve the long-standing Easterlin paradox. As we have shown in this research, data on recalled happiness can help to jointly test some hypotheses on the use of the satisfaction scale and on the recall process.…”

“…Some exceptions are the classic contributions by Cantril (1965) and Easterlin (2001) and the small body of literature dedicated to hedonic adaptation (Clark, 1999; Lyubomirsky, 2011), but none of these works analyzed the discrepancy between reported and recalled well-being. The authors of several recent articles (Kaiser, 2022; Köke & Perino, 2017) noted some inconsistencies between actual and recalled well-being in one of the surveys analyzed here, but they did not attempt to explain the recall structure. A few methodological articles have used recalled subjective well-being to assess the test-retest reliability of life-satisfaction scores (Atkinson, 1982; Michalos & Kahlke, 2010).…”

Using Life Satisfaction and Happiness Data for Environmental Valuation: An Experienced Preference Approach

“…The justification for the use of life-satisfaction scores is that the standards underlying people's judgments about their lives reflect their preferences over possible lives (Frey et al 2010, Kaiser 2022), an assumption supported by studies where anticipated life satisfaction (more so than affective SWB measures) is a strong predictor of people's ex ante preferences over life scenarios (Benjamin et al 2012(Benjamin et al , 2014. Rayo and Becker (2007, p. 487) "consider that maximizing happiness is closely linked, if not identical, to maximizing utility in the standard economic way", where happiness is understood as hedonic or experienced utility and broadly defined as a synonym for SWB.…”

From Happiness Data to Economic Conclusions

“…Depending on the paper and context, these papers find mixed evidence on whether scale-use shifts occurred (see Kaiser, 2022, for a literature review and formal development of this approach). This approach generally assumes that respondents have unbiased memories of their situation in previous years, although Fabian (2022) relaxes this assumption by comparing ratings now of previous years' SWB with respondents' ratings now of what they believe they would have rated their own SWB in previous years-a comparison that holds constant memory of the situation in previous years.…”