Most happiness research is based on questions which ask respondents about how happy they are or how satisfied they are with their lives in general. A number of papers over the years have explored the links between these overall ratings and people’s day-to-day emotional states and found that (at least in the survey period) there are only modest correlations between them.

The most recent paper, by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, using a massive 450,000 person US sample over 2008-09 (bad years economically in the US), again finds that the statistical relationship isn’t strong.

They used three measures of daily emotional well-being: positive affect (reports of happiness, enjoyment and frequent smiling), blue affect (reports of worry and sadness) and stress the day before the survey. The life satisfaction question asked respondents to rate their lives from 0, worst possible life, to 10, best possible life. None of the correlations between emotional well-being and life satisfaction were higher than .31 (0 would be no relationship, 1 would be a complete association). Continue reading “Money and the emotions” →