Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decisionmaking?: A Hedgefoxian Perspective

14. The Mind and the Body: Subjective Well-Being in an Objective World

• 14 • The Mind and the Body: Subjective Well-Being in an Objective World JONATHAN LEVAV FOLLOWING an afternoon of intense lovemaking with General Scheisskopf’s wife, Captain Yossarian, the hero of Joseph Heller’s Catch22 , argues with his lover about the role of God in creating life’s miseries. Yossarian asks, “ ‘What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?’ ” “ ‘Pain?’ ” she retorts. “ ‘Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.’ ” Yossarian replies, “ ‘Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of his celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person’s forehead?’ ” “ ‘People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes in the middle of their foreheads,’ ” responds Scheisskopf’s wife. (Heller 1955/1961, 184) Silly or not, a neon light in lieu of feeling pain would certainly simplify the task of those who study how painful (or pleasurable) experiences affect human well-being. Instead, researchers must assess the impact of these experiences on well-being by measuring a diffuse set of mental or physical neon lights that flicker inconsistently. 315 Social and cognitive psychologists investigate the effect of life experiences on people’s subjective, or self-reported, judgments of well-being or happiness. These judgments are assessed using surveys consisting of single- or multi-item measures that ask about satisfaction with life in general , satisfaction with certain attributes in particular, happiness, and mood (for example, the Subjective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction scale; Pavot and Diener 1993). Although some scales are used more than others, there is no standard methodology. Respondents are asked to rate their current state, evaluate the state of others, or predict their state in the future given the occurrence of a life event or change in circumstance. Sometimes ratings are assessed repeatedly at random over time (for example, the Ecological Momentary Assessment [EMA]) or at the end of the day in diary format using recollected emotions (for example, the Day Reconstruction Method [DRM]); other times, surveys are used in cross-sectional or between-subject designs. From the responses obtained, psychologists deduce conclusions about the factors, events, or circumstances that influence happiness. Physicians ascertain well-being objectively by measuring the impact of various experiences (events or circumstances) on people’s physical and mental health. Sometimes these measurements are conducted by physical examination and other times by using diagnostic survey instruments (for example, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistics Manual IV [DSM IV]). Some of these instruments consist of checklists that rely on subjective reports of subjective experience (for example, sadness) or on subjective reports of objective experiences (for example, lethargy or nightmares). The composite score on the checklist indicates a diagnosis. Study designs vary depending on the availability of data. In some cases, measurements are conducted prior to and following a life event; in other studies, patients’ health is assessed after an event and is compared to suitable controls. Each of these approaches—the psychological and the medical—is an effort to reveal a consistent, detectable “signal” of well-being. Surprisingly , they often lead to opposite conclusions: while judgments of subjective well-being (SWB) show little or no correlation with objective circumstances, physicians find that life events and circumstances are highly related to objective well-being (OWB). It is important to understand how such a contradiction might arise and what it might signify. In exploring these questions, we are motivated by the increasing interest in the field of hedonic psychology and subjective well-being as a basis for public policy (Kahneman, Diener, and Schwarz 1999). Thus, these questions raise the issue of whether it makes sense to use emotions to help not only individual decision making, but also policy decision making. 316 Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making? Well-Being: Two Views There are critical conceptual discrepancies between the conclusions of the psychological and medical literatures about the effects of life events and circumstances on well-being. This review helps to frame the discussion on the effect of life events on people’s future happiness; however, it is far from exhaustive (for comprehensive reviews, see Kahneman, Diener, and Schwarz 1999; Diener...