DOI: 10.1126/science.1129688 , 1908 (2006); 312Science et al.Daniel Kahneman,Focusing IllusionWould You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A www.sciencemag.org (this information is current as of December 13, 2006 ):The following resources related to this article are available online at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5782/1908version of this article at: including high-resolution figures, can be found in the onlineUpdated information and services,found at: can berelated to this articleA list of selected additional articles on the Science Web sites http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5782/1908#related-content http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5782/1908#otherarticles, 3 of which can be accessed for free: cites 4 articlesThis article http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/collection/psychologyPsychology : subject collectionsThis article appears in the following http://www.sciencemag.org/help/about/permissions.dtl in whole or in part can be found at: this articlepermission to reproduce of this article or about obtaining reprintsInformation about obtaining registered trademark of AAAS. c 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; all rights reserved. The title SCIENCE is a CopyrightAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. Science (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published weekly, except the last week in December, by the on December 13, 2006 www.sciencemag.orgDownloaded from31. S. Verba, K. L. Schlozman, N. Burns, in The Social Logic ofPolitics, A. S. Zuckerman, Ed. (Temple Univ. Press,Philadelphia, 2005), pp. 95–114.32. R. D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival ofAmerican Community (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000).33. C. Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Addison-Wesley,Reading, MA, 1978).34. L. Stoker, M. K. Jennings, Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 89, 421(1995).35. S. Verba, K. L. Schlozman, H. E. Brady, Voice andEquality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (HarvardUniv. 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).38. J. Kagan, Three Seductive Ideas (Harvard Univ. Press,Cambridge, MA, 1998).39. I thank T. Brader, L. Stoker, and J. Weiss for excellentadvice on an earlier version of this essay.10.1126/science.1127891PERSPECTIVEWould You Be Happier If You WereRicher? A Focusing IllusionDaniel Kahneman,1Alan B. Krueger,1,2*David Schkade,3Norbert Schwarz,4Arthur A. Stone5The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory. Peoplewith above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier thanothers in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time inparticularly enjoyable activities. Moreover, the effect of income on life satisfaction seems to betransient. We argue that people exaggerate the contribution of income to happiness because theyfocus, in part, on conventional achievements when evaluating their life or the lives of others.Most people believe that they would behappier if they were richer, but surveyevidence on subjective well-being islargely inconsistent with that belief. Subjectivewell-being is most commonly measured by ask-ing people, BAll things considered, how satis-fied are you with your life as a whole thesedays?[ or BTaken all together, would you saythat you are very happy, pretty happy, or not toohappy?[ Such questions elicit a global evalua-tion of one_s life. An alternative method askspeople to report their feelings in real time,which yields a measure of experienced affector happiness. Surveys in many countries con-ducted over decades indicate that, on average,reported global judgments of life satisfactionor happiness have not changed much over thelast four decades, in spite of large increases inreal income per capita. Although reported lifesatisfaction and household income are posi-tively correlated in a cross section of people at agiven time, increases in income have been foundto have mainly a transitory effect on individuals_reported life satisfaction (1–3). Moreover, thecorrelation between income and subjective well-being is weaker when a measure of experiencedhappiness is used instead of a global measure.When people consider the impact of anysingle factor on their well-being—not onlyincome—they are prone to exaggerate its im-portance. We refer to this tendency as the fo-cusing illusion. Standard survey questions on lifesatisfaction by which subjective well-being ismeasured may induce a form of focusing illusion,by drawing people_s attention to their relativestanding in the distr ibution of material well-beingand other circumstances. More importantly, thefocusingillusionmaybeasourceoferrorinsignificant decisions that people make (4).Evidence for the focusing illusion comesfrom diverse lines of research. For example,Strack and colleagues (5) reported an experimentin which students were asked: (i) BHow happyare you with your life in general?[ and (ii)BHow many dates did you have last month?[The correlation between the answers to thesequestions was –0.012 (not statistically differentfrom 0) when they were asked in the precedingorder, but the correlation rose to 0.66 when theorder was reversed with another sample ofstudents. The dating question evidently causedthat aspect of life to become salient and itsimportance to be exaggerated when the respon-dents encountered the more general questionabout their happiness. Similar focusing effectswere observed when attention was first called torespondents_ marriage (6)orhealth(7). Oneconclusion from this research is that people donot know how happy or satisfied they are withtheir life in the way they know their height ortelephone number. The answers to global lifesatisfaction questions are constructed only whenasked (8), and are, therefore, susceptible to thefocusing of attention on different aspects of life.To test the focusing illusion regarding income,we asked a sample of working women to estimatethe percentage of time that they had spent in a badmood in the preceding day. Respondents werealso asked to predict the percentage of time thatpeople with pairs of various life circumstances(Table 1), such as high- and low-income, typi-cally spend in a bad mood. Predictions werecompared with the actual reports of mood pro-vided by respondents who met the relevant cir-cumstances. The predictions