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It´s just a survey, but one thing we can conclude by the data: those who earn more, "think" they are more happy. And those who earn less, "think" they are less

It´s just a survey, but one thing we can conclude by the data: those who earn more, "think" they are more happy. And those who earn less, "think" they are less happy. The point is, what is happiness ? By these numbers, happiness comes from money and by my personal experience (could be wrong), happiness don´t have anything with money. Maybe joy, satisfaction and fun have, but not true happiness. So the article could be entitled as: The Self-Employed Are The Most Satisfied ... and not the happiest. Maybe the most happiest are priests, nuns and people who dedicate their lives to others. Guess the survey was ok, but the journalist behind the article was not happy in the way that he interpreted the research.

jerf 17y ago
At the point where you're reduced to saying "They think they're happy, but they're not!", you should probably just pack it in. If you're going to second guess people's own reporting like that about their own happiness, you can just as well conclude that they're even happier than they are reporting, as long as you're just making stuff up to support your preconceived biases. Maybe their self-report isn't accurate, but you have no basis to decide that, or determine in what way it is inaccurate.
roc 17y ago
I'm confused by your quotation marks around 'think'. Are you suggesting that, in the case of a personal emotional state, people don't know whether they themselves are happy or not? It reminds me of a joke in L.A. STORY (paraphrased): "Which is to say: I was deeply unhappy but didn't know it, because I was so happy all the time". Generally, studies involving happiness sidestep the minefield of trying to quantify or even qualify happiness. They simply ask people whether they are happy and then search for statistical correlations between those who report being 'happy' vs those who report being 'sad'. I can only imagine that this study was conducted similarly.
- marcofloriano 17y ago

jerf 17y ago

At the point where you're reduced to saying "They think they're happy, but they're not!", you should probably just pack it in. If you're going to second guess people's own reporting like that about their own happiness, you can just as well conclude that they're even happier than they are reporting, as long as you're just making stuff up to support your preconceived biases. Maybe their self-report isn't accurate, but you have no basis to decide that, or determine in what way it is inaccurate.

roc 17y ago

I'm confused by your quotation marks around 'think'. Are you suggesting that, in the case of a personal emotional state, people don't know whether they themselves are happy or not? It reminds me of a joke in L.A. STORY (paraphrased): "Which is to say: I was deeply unhappy but didn't know it, because I was so happy all the time". Generally, studies involving happiness sidestep the minefield of trying to quantify or even qualify happiness. They simply ask people whether they are happy and then search for statistical correlations between those who report being 'happy' vs those who report being 'sad'. I can only imagine that this study was conducted similarly.

marcofloriano 17y ago