How Accurate Are We When Assessing Our Own Happiness?
Want to know your accuracy?
Consider this: When you are asked: 1. How Happy Are You Now? 2. How Happy were You Yesterday, or Last Year, or Ten Years Ago? 3. How Happy Will You Be in the Future (after a big dream have come true)?
How accurate do you think your answers would be?
Based on research data, not surprisingly we are most accurate for 1 (How happy are we now?), less so but still not too bad for 2 (concerning our past happiness); however, we are PRETTY BAD in projecting our future happiness.
In research of happiness, accuracy in self-reports is an important factor to consider. Outside of research, this could be interesting to think about too. Particularly about our future happiness, which is very important to consider when we set our life goals, or “dreams”.
First of all, happiness is an internal, personal feeling. Therefore, we ourselves are the best in judging whether and how happy we are. That’s why in surveys researchers take respondents’ words as the direct indicator when measuring their happiness.
However, some factors might be in play that affect how accurate our judgement is even on our own feelings such as happiness.
Memory inaccuracy is one factor when reporting our feelings in the past. We are most accurate when asked how happy we are now because we are experiencing it. But when asked about a time (or period of time) in the past, we are not as accurate for we need to use our memories. The longer into the past, the less accurate our memories tend to be.
Another disadvantage in accuracy about happiness in the past is that we don’t actually FEEL it now, we have to resort on recalling the feelings, which might not be the same as how we felt at the time. And also, knowingly or unknowingly, we make cognitive JUDGEMENT to make up for vague memories - e.g., your brain might figure, “I suppose I was quite happy since everything seemed fine then”, before giving you the answer.
But still, we can usually assess our past happiness to some extent accurately, because, after all, we actually experienced it.
However, when it come to our future happiness, we can be quite off. As we have not actually felt it, and we do not have the actual setting to base our cognitive judgement on. So, we mostly just imagine how it might be. The imagination could be quite inaccurate or not as what it actually turns out to be, as many factors may easily escape our consideration in the imagination.
One example: Years ago, a study surveyed among people with roughly $30,000 annual income about what amount of income would make them satisfied, the answer was $50,000, on average. But when their real income (inflation-adjusted) actually raised to $50,000, they were not satisfied, or not for long anyway.
So, they mis-judged in their answer, like we tend to do when projecting our future happiness, particularly when it is related to money or wealth.
When answering they would be satisfied with $50,000 income, people might actually believe they would be truly happy with that. But they did not answer that in the internal and external conditions as in their future when actually getting $50,000, especially without expecting that after the excitement had worn off and they had got used to the upgraded lifestyle, they no longer felt the satisfaction, and their happiness soon went back to or near their previous level.
Another example: Many people imagine that the very wealthy people must be very happy, and gaining such wealth themselves would make them very happy too, which often lead the former to devote their lives chasing wealth over other things. But research showed a different picture. Data revealed that statistically the very wealthy are at a happiness level similar to people with average income. See a detailed description on that Here.
The reasons for our mis-judgement are, among others, that we tend to only imagine the initial excitement and the enjoyment of an upgraded lifestyle, but we usually do not factor in the transiency (excitement worn off), adaptation (getting used to, and oblivious about, the new lifestyle), and a host of other factors when imagining our future happiness (particularly when brought by external conditions such as money), and we tend not to consider much, if at all, the possible problems that come with the wealth, that we would need to dealt with….
So, next time when you consider a life plan or actions concerning your future happiness, particularly when it comes to money (income, wealth), hope the above could add some insights into your assessment and your life-goal considerations.