Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer A Focusing Illusion Daniel Kahneman et al Science 312 1908 2006 DOI 10 1126 science 1129688 The following resources related to this article are available online at www sciencemag org this information is current as of December 13 2006 A list of selected additional articles on the Science Web sites related to this article can be found at http www sciencemag org cgi content full 312 5782 1908 related content This article cites 4 articles 3 of which can be accessed for free http www sciencemag org cgi content full 312 5782 1908 otherarticles This article appears in the following subject collections Psychology http www sciencemag org cgi collection psychology Information about obtaining reprints of this article or about obtaining permission to reproduce this article in whole or in part can be found at http www sciencemag org help about permissions dtl Science print ISSN 0036 8075 online ISSN 1095 9203 is published weekly except the last week in December by the American Association for the Advancement of Science 1200 New York Avenue NW Washington DC 20005 Copyright c 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science all rights reserved The title SCIENCE is a registered trademark of AAAS Downloaded from www sciencemag org on December 13 2006 Updated information and services including high resolution figures can be found in the online version of this article at http www sciencemag org cgi content full 312 5782 1908 LIFE CYCLES 34 L Stoker M K Jennings Am Pol Sci Rev 89 421 1995 35 S Verba K L Schlozman H E Brady Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American Politics Harvard Univ Press Cambridge MA 1995 36 M K Jennings Am J Pol Sci 23 755 1979 37 D P Green J A Cowden J Pol 54 471 1992 PERSPECTIVE Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer A Focusing Illusion Daniel Kahneman 1 Alan B Krueger 1 2 David Schkade 3 Norbert Schwarz 4 Arthur A Stone5 The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory People with above average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment to moment experience tend to be more tense and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities Moreover the effect of income on life satisfaction seems to be transient We argue that people exaggerate the contribution of income to happiness because they focus in part on conventional achievements when evaluating their life or the lives of others ost people believe that they would be happier if they were richer but survey evidence on subjective well being is largely inconsistent with that belief Subjective well being is most commonly measured by asking people BAll things considered how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days or BTaken all together would you say that you are very happy pretty happy or not too happy Such questions elicit a global evaluation of one s life An alternative method asks people to report their feelings in real time which yields a measure of experienced affect or happiness Surveys in many countries conducted over decades indicate that on average reported global judgments of life satisfaction or happiness have not changed much over the last four decades in spite of large increases in real income per capita Although reported life satisfaction and household income are positively correlated in a cross section of people at a given time increases in income have been found to have mainly a transitory effect on individuals reported life satisfaction 1 3 Moreover the correlation between income and subjective wellbeing is weaker when a measure of experienced happiness is used instead of a global measure When people consider the impact of any single factor on their well being not only income they are prone to exaggerate its importance We refer to this tendency as the fo M cusing illusion Standard survey questions on life satisfaction by which subjective well being is measured may induce a form of focusing illusion by drawing people s attention to their relative standing in the distribution of material well being and other circumstances More importantly the focusing illusion may be a source of error in significant decisions that people make 4 Evidence for the focusing illusion comes from diverse lines of research For example Strack and colleagues 5 reported an experiment in which students were asked i BHow happy are you with your life in general and ii BHow many dates did you have last month The correlation between the answers to these 1908 10 1126 science 1127891 questions was 0 012 not statistically different from 0 when they were asked in the preceding order but the correlation rose to 0 66 when the order was reversed with another sample of students The dating question evidently caused that aspect of life to become salient and its importance to be exaggerated when the respondents encountered the more general question about their happiness Similar focusing effects were observed when attention was first called to respondents marriage 6 or health 7 One conclusion from this research is that people do not know how happy or satisfied they are with their life in the way they know their height or telephone number The answers to global life satisfaction questions are constructed only when asked 8 and are therefore susceptible to the focusing of attention on different aspects of life To test the focusing illusion regarding income we asked a sample of working women to estimate the percentage of time that they had spent in a bad mood in the preceding day Respondents were also asked to predict the percentage of time that people with pairs of various life circumstances Table 1 such as high and low income typically spend in a bad mood Predictions were compared with the actual reports of mood provided by respondents who met the relevant circumstances The predictions were biased in two respects First the prevalence of bad mood was Table 1 The focusing illusion Exaggerating the effect of various circumstances on well being The question posed was Now we would like to know overall how you felt and what your mood was like yesterday Thinking only about yesterday what percentage of the time were you in a bad mood a little low or irritable in a mildly pleasant mood in a very good mood Bad mood reported here is the sum of the first two response categories A parallel question was then asked about yesterday at work Bad mood at work was used for the supervision and fringe