What Do You Think Would Make You Happier? What Do You Think You Would Choose?

Benjamin, Daniel J.; Heffetz, Ori; Kimball, Miles S.; Rees-Jones, Alex

doi:10.1257/aer.102.5.2083

Cited by 296 publications

(266 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Furthermore, we note that the result that the marginal satisfaction of individuals with higher neuroticism declines faster for high income levels provides a possible explanation of the finding that more neurotic individuals tend more often to choose life scenarios with a lower level of life satisfaction (Benjamin et al, 2011). Neurotic and highly ambitious individuals, even when they prefer to be richer, expect that the cost of being rich is high for then.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

Life satisfaction, income and personality

Proto

Rustichini

2015

Journal of Economic Psychology

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Life Satisfaction, Income and PersonalityWe use personality traits to better understand the relationship between income and life satisfaction. Personality traits mediate the effect of income on life satisfaction. The effect of neuroticism, which measures sensitivity to threat and punishment, is strong in both the British Household Panel Survey and the German Socioeconomic Panel. Neuroticism increases the usually observed concavity of the relationship: individuals with a higher neuroticism score enjoy extra income more than those with a lower score if they are poorer, and enjoy extra income less if they are richer. When the interaction between income and neuroticism is introduced, income does not have a significant effect on its own. To interpret the results, we present a simple model based on Prospect Theory, where we assume that: (i) life satisfaction is dependent on the gap between aspired and realized income, and this is modulated by neuroticism; and (ii) income increases in aspirations with a slope less than unity, so that the gap between aspired and realized income increases with aspirations. From the estimation of this model we argue that poorer individuals tend to over-shoot in their aspirations, while the rich tend to under-shoot. The estimation of the model also shows a substantial effect of traits on income. JEL Classification:D03, D87, C33

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

Life satisfaction, income and personality

Proto

Rustichini

2015

Journal of Economic Psychology

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“…In a recent contribution, Benjamin et al (2012) find that predicted subjective wellbeing can indeed well explain individual decisions in hypothetic choice experiments regarding relative and absolute income levels. Furthermore, they are interested in other factors that drive individual decisions, such as health, family happiness, and social status.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their econometric analysis shows that social status concerns have a direct influence on participants' choices that goes beyond the indirect effect of status concerns on subjective wellbeing. However, in contrast to Benjamin et al (2012), in this paper we are more interested in how items' characteristics influence individual choices.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

How much do others matter? Explaining positional concerns for different goods and personal characteristics

Hillesheim¹,

Mechtel

2013

Journal of Economic Psychology

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractWe test concerns for relative standing with respect to private consumption, income, leisure, savings, and personal characteristics, using data from a classroom survey. Our results show highest degrees of positionality for personal characteristics and income. In order to explain positionality, we employ survey participants' ratings of items with respect to (i) observability and (ii) non-psychological negative externalities on others. Based on these ratings, our results show that non-psychological externalities play an important role for an item's degree of positionality. In contrast to previous research, we find that there is no statistically significant effect of an item's observability on its degree of positionality.

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“…As for the variables included in the interaction term, we need to take into account that in non-linear models, the calculation of the marginal interaction effect is not straightforward (Ai and Norton 2003). We finally assume observations to be independent across countries, but account for the possibility of correlated error terms within countries by clustering standard errors on the country level in 14 We thus build on the presumption that reported satisfaction scores convey some information about utility, an assumption commonly made in both the theoretical and empirical happiness literature on the grounds that life satisfaction statements and economic decision-making are highly correlated (e.g., Van Praag 2011;Clark et al 2008;Frey and Stutzer 2002;Kahneman et al 2004;Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2012;Clark and Oswald 1996;Van Praag 2011;Benjamin et al 2012). …”

Section: Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Information technologies and subjective well-being: does the Internet raise material aspirations?

Lohmann

2015

Oxford Economic Papers

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract This paper examines whether access to modern information technologies, in particular the internet, has an impact on invididual positionality -meaning the degree to which subjective well-being is affected by income relative to others rather than absolute income. We provide empirical evidence that positionality and internet access are intertwined. Exploiting variation over time in a panel of European households, we find stated material aspirations to be significantly positively related to computer access in areas with advanced internet infrastructure. Furthermore, we report cross-sectional evidence from the World Values Survey suggesting an indirect negative effect of internet access on subjective well-being since people who regularly use the internet as a source of information derive less satisfaction from income. Together, the empirical findings highlight the importance of information sets for how individuals evaluate own living conditions relative to others and suggests a vital role for informational globalisation to affect positionality. Terms of use: Documents in

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What Do You Think Would Make You Happier? What Do You Think You Would Choose?

Cited by 296 publications

References 37 publications

Life satisfaction, income and personality

Life satisfaction, income and personality

How much do others matter? Explaining positional concerns for different goods and personal characteristics

Information technologies and subjective well-being: does the Internet raise material aspirations?

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