Subjective Well Being

A source of inconsistency not noted in Dolan et al is the effect of survey artefacts. In answer to the question "Do people mean what they say?", Bertrand and Mullainathan (AER, 2001) find that people answer what is true for them at the point of answering but that their interpretation of the question can be skewed by question ordering, framing and context. For example, asking how frequently one dates is heavily correlated with life satisfaction if the dating question comes before the life satisfaction question, but there is virtually no correlation if the life satisfaction question comes first.