Given where i am (and the fact that i havent left my hotel room yet as i am piling through STATA do-files to get ready for the week) i thought i would take a moment to remind people of the classic result on the focusing illusion
Schkade, D., & Kahneman, D. (1998). Does living in California make people happy? A focusing illusion in judgments of life satisfaction.
"Abstract—Large samples of students in the Midwest and in Southern
California rated satisfaction with life overall as well as with various
aspects of life, for either themselves or someone similar to themselves
in one of the two regions. Self-reported overall life satisfaction was the
same in both regions, but participants who rated a similar other
expected Californians to be more satisfied than Midwesterners.
Climate-related aspects were rated as more important for someone
living in another region than for someone in one’s own region. Mediation
analyses showed that satisfaction with climate and with cultural
opportunities accounted for the higher overall life satisfaction predicted
for Californians. Judgments of life satisfaction in a different
location are susceptible to a focusing illusion: Easily observed and
distinctive differences between locations are given more weight in
such judgments than they will have in reality."
3 comments:
"Judgments of life satisfaction in a different location are susceptible to a focusing illusion: Easily observed and
distinctive differences between locations are given more weight in
such judgments than they will have in reality."
i.e. far away hills are green!
Who was it that said academics make a career out of making common sense sound more complicated?
This sounds a bit like "statistical discrimination". So say one knows that happiness is the same in California as the mid West (a fine part of the US I will have you know) and this depends on observables (like climate) and unobservables (maybe some people are easier pleased) it seems natural to put a higher weight on the observables than an omniscient observer would. Say I had a choice between being parachuted into California [happy because of the climate] or the Mid West [equally happy but only God-knows-why], it seems safer to go for California assuming I like the climate.
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