Feeling Good Is Feeling Better
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19040276 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alberto Prati (0000-0002-2666-2008, Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford, corresponding author), Claudia Senik (0000-0001-6236-9389, Sorbonne Université) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 11 |
| Pages | 1828-1841 |
| Publication date | 2022-10-07 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Psychological Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0956-7976 • E-ISSN: 1467-9280 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/09567976221096158 |
| PMID | 36206164 |
| OpenAlex | W4303446286 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 49 |
Can people remember their past happiness? We analyzed data from four longitudinal surveys from the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany spanning from the 1970s until the present, in which more than 60,000 adults were asked questions about their current and past life satisfaction. We uncovered systematic biases in recalled happiness: On average, people tended to overstate the improvement in their well-being over time and to understate their past happiness. But this aggregate figure hides a deep asymmetry: Whereas happy people recall the evolution of their life to be better than it was, unhappy ones tend to exaggerate their life's negative evolution. It thus seems that feeling happy today implies feeling better than yesterday. This recall structure has implications for motivated memory and learning and could explain why happy people are more optimistic, perceive risks to be lower, and are more open to new experiences
Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Feeling · Happiness · Life satisfaction · Recall · Yesterday · Aging and Gerontology Research · Identity, Memory, and Therapy · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction · Psychology · Social Psychology
Relation of implicit theories to the construction of personal histories.
Self-Confidence and Personal Motivation
Psychological Expected Utility Theory and Anticipatory Feelings
Estimating the influence of life satisfaction and positive affect on later income using sibling fixed effects
Happiness and Productivity
When More Pain Is Preferred to Less
Pattern of Human Concerns
The German Socio-Economic Panel (Soep)
Remembering facts versus feelings in the wake of political events
Four Decades of the Economics of Happiness
Forgetting feelings
Affect and memory
Trait Emotional Intelligence and Happiness
Subjective well-being
The triumph of hope over disappointment
Motivated False Memory
From chump to champ
Income and Happiness
Affect, generalization, and the perception of risk
The frequency of temporal-self and social comparisons in people's personal appraisals
Duration neglect in retrospective evaluations of affective episodes
Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle
Belief and feeling
Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being
Stability and Sensitivity in Perceived Quality of Life Measures
The stability and validity of quality of life measures
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |