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So am I right that this paper argues that stupid as self-reporting of mental states may be, it is better than conventional choice theory? They even talk about people's "perception of their experience." Wow! Long live the homunculus! One that always makes me laugh is whenever there is a scandal about advertising of some kind, the journalists go out into the streets and ask the punters if they are influenced by advertising. Surprise, surprise, the result is always 100% "no." Interesting to read that there is currently an explosion of these happiness surveys and their scientific credibility. I thought Amartya Sen has done a pretty good job on this one. Rather than using Sen's classic example of the Indian beggar who sleeps on a wet concrete floor every night, but has just laid some fresh straw, I decided to do a survey myself. My partner was 3 years ago an attractive, gregarious, smoking, drinking, eating butterfly who had never even had a headache in 50 years. Then she had a stroke. She can't eat, let alone smoke or drink, can hardly talk or walk, doesn't go out and is in almost constant pain. I just asked her if she's happy. Answer "yes." I don't deny that that tells me something. And I was pleased to hear it, too. Answers to researchers' questions are objective data. But it is nonsense to think that these words reflect observations of a person's own state of consciousness. Oh, and I'm happy too. Thanks for the paper David. I will study it with more liesure shortly. Andy David Preiss wrote:
Dear Andy,This paper by Daniel Kahneman and Alan Krueger addresses your question, I think:Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being Daniel Kahneman and Alan B. KruegerJournal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 20, Number 1—Winter 2006 —Pages 3–24http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/PDF%20of%20Kahneman%20Krueger%20paper.pdfAccording to these authors, self reported measures may be not that bad, after all.David On Nov 10, 2009, at 11:44 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:I heard another one of those silly reports on the radio just now. Never mind what it was about, but it reported that x% of people who did y are happy, whilst of who didn't, only z% are happy, and the reporter went on to refer to it as an "established fact" that x made people happy. This "established fact" was gained from people filling out survey forms, "checking all the boxes" and returning them in the mail.It is over 100 years, isn't it, since mainstream, positivist science (let alone real science) rejected self-reporting of mental states as a legitimate way of doing psychology. How come it's still going on? Is this taught at universities, or is it just marketing firms moving in on the territory?Andy -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmcaDavid Preiss ddpreiss@me.com http://web.mac.com/ddpreiss/
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/ Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca