This paper studies the test–retest reliability of a standard self-reported life satisfaction measure and of affect measures collected from a diary method. The sample consists of 229 women who were ...interviewed on Thursdays, two weeks apart, in Spring 2005. The correlation of net affect (i.e., duration-weighted positive feelings less negative feelings) measured two weeks apart is .64, which is slightly higher than the correlation of life satisfaction (
r
=
.59). Correlations between income, net affect and life satisfaction are presented, and adjusted for attenuation bias due to measurement error. Life satisfaction is found to correlate much more strongly with income than does net affect. Components of affect that are more person-specific are found to have a higher test–retest reliability than components of affect that are more specific to the particular situation. While reliability figures for subjective well-being measures are lower than those typically found for education, income and many other microeconomic variables, they are probably sufficiently high to support much of the research that is currently being undertaken on subjective well-being, particularly in studies where group means are compared (e.g., across activities or demographic groups).
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Due to declining fertility rates and increasing longevity, the world is growing older. Improving the quality of life of older adults, and not merely preventing deaths, is thus becoming an important ...objective of public policies. It is, therefore, urgent to understand the key dimensions of older adults’ subjective well-being as well as their main drivers. Women represent a large proportion of the older population, and existing evidence suggests that they may be particularly vulnerable, especially in the developing world. Analyzing potential gender differences in experienced well-being in older adults is hence crucial. We exploit information on time use and activity-specific emotional experiences from the abbreviated version of the day reconstruction method contained in the WHO Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE), focusing on five developing countries. We first quantify gender differences in experienced well-being among older adults, which we then deconstruct into corresponding differences in time use and activity-specific net affects. Adjusting for age only, our results indicate a gender gap in experienced well-being in favor of men. Yet, adjusting for additional individual characteristics and life circumstances beyond age weakens this association. Illustrative counterfactual analyses further suggest that gender differences in activity-specific net affects appear more important than differences in time use for explaining the disadvantage of older women. Our results suggest that women’s lower affect in most activities is linked to the conditions under which these activities are performed, and in particular to the higher level of disability of older women compared to men of the same age.
This study attempted to investigate the influence of proactive personality on career indecision and career maturity, and to examine the moderating effects of affect spin. The author administered ...proactive personality, career indecision, and career maturity scales to 70 college students. Affect spin was calculated using the day reconstruction method, wherein participants evaluated their affective experiences by using 20 affective terms at the same time each day for 21 consecutive days. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that proactive personality significantly predicted career indecision and career maturity, even after controlling for valence and activation variability, neuroticism, age, and gender. Furthermore, affect spin moderated the associations of proactive personality with career indecision and maturity. The theoretical and practical implications of the moderating effects of affect spin are discussed.
Parents Reap What They Sow Ashton-James, Claire E.; Kushlev, Kostadin; Dunn, Elizabeth W.
Social psychological & personality science,
11/2013, Volume:
4, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
A controversial feature of modern parenting is “child-centrism,” the tendency for parents to prioritize their children’s well-being above their own. It has been suggested that child-centric parenting ...in its various forms may undermine parental well-being. Contrary to popular belief, more child-centric parents reported deriving more happiness and meaning from parenthood (Study 1). Study 2 employed the day reconstruction method (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004) to capture parents’ actual experiences while taking care of their children. Consistent with Study 1, greater child-centrism was associated with the experience of greater positive affect, less negative affect, and greater meaning in life when engaged in child care activities. This link between child-centrism and well-being stands in contrast to recent arguments about the pitfalls of overinvestment in children, while dovetailing with a growing body of evidence that personal well-being is associated with investing in others rather than oneself.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
There is an ongoing debate as to whether pursuing happiness is beneficial for people’s subjective well-being (SWB). To address this question, we tested whether attention to SWB – measured by ...participation in SWB surveys – is related to experienced SWB in two longitudinal studies. The initial study was conducted from November to December 2013 (
N
= 129), and the replication study, three years later from November to December 2016 (
N
= 120). The studies include two groups: one group (the control group) answered three SWB surveys over 4 weeks, and the other group (the experimental group) followed the same procedure but additionally tracked their SWB in detail using the experience sampling method four times a day and the day reconstruction method once a day using a smartphone application for two weeks to heighten their attention to their SWB. Both studies show higher SWB scores at later measurements compared to the first ones.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
The Happiness Indicator (
https://www.happinessindicator.com
) is an online tool designed to make people more aware of their own happiness. The theory behind the website is that a keener awareness of ...one’s own happiness helps one find an optimal lifestyle and consequently promotes happiness among users of the website. In this paper, we describe this tool and explore its effectiveness. Users periodically record how happy they feel on the present day and how happy they have felt over the past month, using the Happiness Comparer. They also have the option of indicating in the Happiness Diary how happy they felt during the various activities of the previous day. Users receive instant feedback in the form of a comparison with their earlier scores and with the average scores of similar users. The website has been online since January 2011; 5411 participants have participated at least twice, and 64% of them used the Happiness Diary one or more times. These numbers are now high enough to permit a first check to see whether repeated use of the Happiness Indicator is followed by the expected rise of the participants’ happiness. We found that the use of the Happiness Comparer was followed by a small non-significant increase in happiness, while using the Happiness Diary was followed by a greater increase and statistically significant upturn. Using the Happiness Diary 10 times, was followed by an average increase in happiness of 1,5%. In addition, we found that the relationship between diary use and rise of happiness was particularly strong for those who felt less happy when they first used the Happiness Indicator.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
We introduce EmoSnaps, a mobile application that captures unobtrusively pictures of one’s facial expressions throughout the day and uses them for later recall of her momentary emotions. We describe ...two field studies that employ EmoSnaps in an attempt to investigate if and how individuals and their relevant others infer emotions from self-face and familiar face pictures, respectively. Study 1 contrasted users’ recalled emotions as inferred from EmoSnaps’ self-face pictures to ground truth data as derived from Experience Sampling. Contrary to our expectations, we found that people are better able to infer their past emotions from a self-face picture the longer the time has elapsed since capture. Study 2 assessed EmoSnaps’ ability to capture users’ experiences while interacting with different mobile apps. The study revealed systematic variations in users’ emotions while interacting with different categories of mobile apps (such as productivity and entertainment), social networking services, as well as direct social communications through phone calls and instant messaging, but also diurnal and weekly patterns of happiness as inferred from EmoSnaps’ self-face pictures. All in all, the results of both studies provided us with confidence over the validity of self-face pictures captured through EmoSnaps as memory cues for emotion recall, and the effectiveness of the EmoSnaps tool in measuring users’ momentary experiences.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
This study attempted to investigate the influence of proactive personality on career indecision and career maturity, and to examine the moderating effects of affect spin. We administered proactive ...personality, career indecision, and career maturity scales to 70 college students. Affect spin was calculated using the day reconstruction method, wherein participants evaluated their affective experiences by using 20 affective terms at the same time each day for 21 consecutive days. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that proactive personality significantly predicted career indecision and career maturity, even after controlling for valence and activation variability, neuroticism, age, and gender. Furthermore, affect spin moderated the associations of proactive personality with career indecision and maturity. The theoretical and practical implications of the moderating effects of affect spin are discussed.
The aims of the present study were to assess the psychometric properties of the Spanish-language version of the abbreviated Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), and to investigate differences in ...affective experience in Mexico and Spain. A total of 2,629 adults from Mexico and 4,583 from Spain were interviewed. Information was obtained using an abbreviated version of the DRM, which had been translated into Spanish. Reliability, validity, and the structure of affect were assessed and compared between countries. The diurnal variation of affect, the changes in affect along the life span, time use, and the relationship between affect and socio-demographic characteristics were also analysed. Adequate psychometric properties for the Spanish-language version of the abbreviated DRM were found in both the Mexican and the Spanish samples, and affect tended to improve along the life span in both countries. However, net affect did not have the same distribution function (Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic = 0.25,
p
< 0.001) in both countries, being higher in Spain. Moreover, both samples showed opposite patterns in the diurnal variation of affect. The results showed that the Spanish-language version of the DRM is a feasible and valid method to measure affect, its diurnal rhythms, and time use in large-scale surveys.
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CEKLJ, DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Studies among adult populations show that estimates of how happy one has felt in the past tend to be more positive than average happiness as assessed using time sampling techniques. This ...‘memory-experience gap’ is attributed to cognitive biases, among which fading affect bias. In this paper we report a study among 352 pupils of a secondary school in the Netherlands. These youngsters reported subsequently: 1) how happy they had felt yesterday, 2) how happy they had felt during the last month, 3) what they had done the previous day and 4) how they had felt during each of these activities. Unlike earlier studies, the average rating of happiness in the last month appeared to be lower than average happiness of the previous day. In accordance with earlier research, the global rating of happiness during the previous day was higher than the average of reported affect during separate activities during that day. A further multilevel analysis suggest that in estimating how they have felt on the whole yesterday, youngsters overestimated short pleasant episodes and underestimated unpleasant episodes, especially when such episodes lasted long.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
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