On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your life? If you have ever taken a survey, you may have been asked this question. What factors did you consider when you answered this? Did you consider how much money you have, how educated you are, or how happy you are with your relationships? Did you compare yourself to others? Or did you answer the question positively because you were in a great mood after receiving an A on your test that day? Many aspects of your life probably influenced your answer to the question.
Stony Brook’s Dr. Arthur A. Stone, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and Vice-Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, suggests that problems arise when researchers use general questions such as these to measure a person’s happiness or satisfaction. Dr. Stone wonders, ‘When people answer these questions, are they really happy with their lives or are they just happier at that moment?’ A single answer to these general or global questions may inaccurately reflect a person’s happiness. In an effort to ‘develop new ways of getting at how people experience life,’ Dr Stone, in collaboration with other professors from Princeton University and the University of Michigan, has developed new and improved techniques which he has used in his recent research.
For years, Dr. Stone and his colleagues worked on developing technologies that would measure people’s feelings but would not have the problems associated with global questions and retrospective questions. Retrospective questions ask a person about a specific period of time in the past, such as, ‘Over the last month, how has your pain felt?’ Dr. Stone’s team at Stony Brook developed the Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), a technique that uses an electronic diary programmed to ask a person a question, such as, ‘How is your pain right now?’ The question is asked several times a day for many days, and an average of all these answers is then calculated to yield a more accurate answer to the general question, ‘Over the last month, how has your pain felt?’ Dr. Stone’s colleagues also developed the Daily Reconstruction Method (DRM), a technique that asks a person to reconstruct his entire day in detail so his responses can be rated. The EMA and DRM are more advanced than asking single global and retrospective questions. Global and retrospective questions reveal how a person is feeling at the moment he is asked the question, and researchers assume this answer properly reflects how he feels about life. However, Dr. Stone’s new techniques take into account how a person feels at various points of time over a long interval, and the person’s averaged answer is used as a measure for their overall happiness.
In June 2006, Dr. Stone’s most recent research findings were published in an issue of Science. In his study, he used the EMA and the DRM to see if any connections exist between a person’s wealth and his happiness. His new methods show that there is no significant difference in levels of happiness between people who have high incomes and people who have low incomes. While other studies have supported this idea in the past, these previous studies used less accurate global and retrospective questions to measure people’s satisfaction with their lives.
Dr. Stone’s research is significant because it reaffirms, using new methods, that there is no significant link between money and happiness. However, even though a person’s high income may not necessarily lead to happiness, Dr. Stone’s research shows that people still want to increase their wealth. Dr. Stone explains this finding as the result of a focusing illusion. People tend to focus on one part of the future without considering any other aspects of the future. They look forward to becoming wealthy, but they do not realize how many aspects of their lives will not change if they do become rich in the future; they will still have the same relationships, live in a similar environment, and they may even experience more stress if they are continuously working to receive a higher income. Dr. Stone’s study is one example of how his new techniques can be used to yield important results.
The methods Dr. Stone uses and the questions he asks about people’s satisfaction ‘are not purely ivory tower questions ‘hellip; They have a practical importance,’ he says. His future endeavors include applying his team’s methods to a National Institute of Health $25 million project which is creating new self-report methods in the medical system. He is also using his techniques to help develop new clinical interventions, a collaborative effort by many universities in the United States. Dr. Stone’s future plans show how he is looking forward to ‘applying new methods for issues that have been around for a long time.’
