Do People Report Happiness Accurately?

James Andreoni, B. Douglas Bernheim and Tingyan Jia

No 32208, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Validation of happiness measures is inherently challenging because subjective sensations are unobserved. We introduce a novel validation method: subjects report how happy they would feel (or did feel) after some specified event, as well as how they would respond (or would have responded) to a survey question about their happiness after the same event. The difference between these two responses measures “self-reported misreporting.” We demonstrate that self-reported misreporting varies across events and is substantial for certain types of events. These findings imply that caution is warranted when interpreting differences in self-reported well-being across contexts.

JEL-codes: D60 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
Note: PE
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