Living, and thinking about it: two perspectives on life by Daniel Kahneman and Jason Riis Article presentation by Aimee T.L. Kathartt

1. LIVING, AND THINKING ABOUT IT:
TWO PERSPECTIVES ON LIFE
by Daniel Kahneman and Jason Riis
Part 3: Psychology of well-being
Chapter 11
page 285–301

2. THE SCIENCE OF WELL-BEING
edited by
N. Baylis
Felicia A. Huppert
B. Keverne
Oxford University Press, 2005

3. ARTICLE PRESENTATION

4. STRUCTURE
Part 1 Evolution and development
Chapter 4 Successful ageing: from cell to self
Part 2 Physiology and neuroscience
Chapter 7 The potential of nutrition to promote physical and
behavioral well being
Part 3 Psychology of well-being
Chapter 10 A balanced psychology and a full life
Part 4 Cultural perspectives
Chapter 16 Naturally happy, naturally healthy: the role of the
natural environment in well-being
Part 5 Social and economic considerations
Chapter 17 The social context of well-being
Chapter 18 Does money buy happiness?
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198567523.001.0001/acprof-
9780198567523-chapter-11

5. NEW-THOUGHT WRITER

6. DANIEL KAHNEMAN
the father
of behavioral economics

7. JASON RIIS
Professor
The Wharton School, Marketing Department
University of Pennsylvania
https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Jason-Riis---CV---August-2016.pdf

8. LIVING, AND THINKING ABOUT IT:
TWO PERSPECTIVES ON LIFE
KEY WORDS
introspection, retrospection, happiness, experienced well-being, evaluated well-being, experienced
utility, moment utility, day reconstruction method, peak/end rule, experience sampling method,
separability, time neutrality, physiological index, eudaemonia

9. ABSTRACT
 introspection & retrospection -> the experience of happiness
the experiencing self & the evaluating or remembering self
the constituents of well-being -> empirical studies of happiness -> experienced well-being & evaluated
well-being -> more objective measures of happiness
the concepts of experienced utility, moment utility and total utility -> an event's impact on a person's
happiness
dimensionality, separability, and time neutrality
the day-reconstruction method vs experience sampling method
comparing happiness across countries

10. STRUCTURE
I. Introduction
II. Two selves
III. Constituents of well-being
IV. Objective happiness and the logic of experienced utility
V. Measuring experienced well-being: the day reconstruction
method
VI. A possible application: comparing well-being across countries
VII.Concluding remarks

11. I. INTRODUCTION
Question about past
feelings
 How was your vacation?
Question about present
feelings
 Does this hurt?

12. INTROSPECTION VS
RETROSPECTION
Introspective & retrospective
evaluations of past episodes
 accurate retrieval of feelings (?)
 the temporal integration of emotional
experiences (?)
Reports of current feelings
 more authoritative

13. WHO IS HAPPIER, THE FRENCH OR
THE AMERICANS?

14. II. TWO SELVES
 life = a string of moments
 each moment = up to 3 seconds
 each waking day = up to 20 000 moments
 a 70-year life = up to 500 million moments
 multidimensional moments – short existence = psychological present (?)
 the introspective individual: current goals; ongoing activities; physical
comfort or discomfort; mental content

15. THE EXPERIENCING SELF
“What happens to these moments? The answer is straightforward: with very few exceptions, they simply
disappear. The experiencing self that lives each of these moments barely has time to exist.”
 arguments for and against

16. THE REMEMBERING AND EVALUATING SELF
“When we are asked 'how good was the vacation', it is not an experiencing self that answers, but a
remembering and evaluating self, the self that keeps score and maintains records. Unlike the experiencing
self, the remembering self is relatively stable and permanent. It is a basic fact of the human condition that
memories are what we get to keep from our experience, and the only perspective that we can adopt as
we think about our lives is therefore that of the remembering self.”

17. FOOD FOR THOUGHT
 the remembering & evaluating self = the past self (?)
 the experiencing self = the present self (?)
 If so, shouldn’t we also have a planning & expecting self as the representation of our future self?
Living = the only physical manifestation of the self => the experiencing self should include all the other two selves =>
remembering self is the psychological part of the experiencing self
thinking about living = two perspectives: remembering & expecting (?)
Is the dichotomy of selves incomplete?
there are as many experiencing selves as moments in a waking day => each moment (sequence of moments) is also
related to a variable number of past and future selves => the past and future are only psychological manifestations of
the present, which is the only physical time we are aware of

18. MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT: OBSSESSION WITH TIME
TEMPORALITY AS SEEN IN QUANTUM MECHANICS, PSYCHOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE, SPIRITUALITY,
ASTRONOMY:
THE POWER OF NOWIs time …?
 linear
 simultaneous
 cyclic
 individual
 collective
 historic
 a spatial dimension (the 4th)

19. EXAMPLES OF TEMPORAL PERSPECTIVES:
PRESENT SELF = EXPERIENCE (NOW) + PAST & FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
time-travelling as a psychological reality: living in the past & living in the future = everlasting diseases
of the spirit, others than Noica’s maladies
 meditation = an almost impossible task?
 the power to stay in the moment & to live in the here and now
 staying in the moment = a sign of awakening and enlightenment

20. TO BE OR NOT TO BE DIVIDED
INTO MULTIPLE SELVES

21. SUBJECTIVITY OF SELVES

22. REALITY AS A CITADEL OBSERVED BY
NUMBERLESS PAIRS OF EYES:
EVERYBODY SEES SOMETHING ELSE

23. LIFE AS A CITADEL
EVALUATED, OBSERVED AND SCORED
BY NUMBERLESS SELVES
 the dominance of the remembering self
 the music lover example
 the bad ending ruined the whole experience = all is well when ends well
 the experience was not ruined, only the memory of it
 “The remembering self is sometimes (?) simply wrong.”

24. THE PEAK/END RULE
 Empirical study:
• brief emotional films
• painful medical procedures
• annoyingly loud sounds
 Conclusion:
• episodes are scored by the value of a representative moment: the end or the most
intense one
 Duration neglect = the evaluation of episodes is remarkably insensitive to their
duration

25. EVALUATIVE MEMORY -> BAD CHOICES
 the cold-pressor test
 the point of view of the experiencing self
 the remembering self -> the peak/end rule implies that the added period of diminishing pain
makes the memory of the long trial less aversive

26. III. CONSTITUENTS OF WELL-BEING
 well-being = subjective and referring to a period of time that may be measured in days
or months
 experienced well-being = the statistics of the momentary affective states experienced
during the reference period
 the happiness question 'How happy are you these days?’
 evaluated well-being = global subjective evaluations of one's life during the same
period
- retrieving, integrating, and evaluating memories remote and more remote from the
actual experience
 the life-satisfaction question 'How satisfied are you with your life as a whole?’

27. EUDAEMONIC WELL-BEING
 Eudaemonic = conducive to happiness
• measuring stable aspects of the self-concept
 purpose in life
 self-actualization
 optimism

28. EXPERIENCED WELL-BEING
The well-being of the experiencing self has been the object of much less
research
• conceptual and methodological issues that arise in measuring experienced well-
being
• preliminary results and conclusions

29. Sleep
deprivation
Unemployment
Cultural
disposition
Experienced well-being
(measured by experience
sampling)
Evaluated well-being
(measured by life
satisfaction, etc)
Health effects
Life choices
Illustrative Antecedents Illustrative Consequences
When experienced well-being
and evaluated well-being diverge,
what is well-being?

30. CAUSE & EFFECT
The two components of well-being are expected to be correlated, but they are distinct, empirically as well as
conceptually.
emotional experiences -> subjective evaluations: - mood is the major determinant of life
satisfaction
- people's routine moods are mainly determined
by their general view of their lives (False)
subjective evaluations of the state of one's life -> affective consequences, at least while the thoughts of these
evaluations are active
some life circumstances have a direct impact on both experience and evaluation (UNEMPLOYMENT)

31. THE COMPOUND NATURE OF WELL-BEING
IN A STUDY OF VACATIONS
substantial discrepancies between respondents' recalled
enjoyment of their vacation and their actual experienced
enjoyment
it was the recalled enjoyment, however, and not the experienced
enjoyment, that predicted people's desire to repeat the vacation
experience

32. TWO REPRESENTATIVE DEFINITIONS
OF WELL-BEING
'Well-being, which we define as people's
positive evaluations of their lives, includes
positive emotions, engagement, satisfaction
and meaning' (Seligman 2002).
'(…) a broad category of phenomena that
includes people's emotional responses,
domain satisfactions, and global judgments
of life satisfaction’ (Diener, 1999)

33. COMPONENTS PARTLY INDEPENDENT
OF EACH OTHER
positive emotions = experienced utility
meaning and life satisfaction = evaluation
The simplifying assumption that well-being is unitary
the common practice of using both national differences and individual differences in accounts of individual well-
being
This practice can only be justified if the phrase 'happier than' has a similar meaning in the contexts of 'John is
happier than Peter; he scores higher by 1 point on the happiness scale' and 'the Americans are happier than the
French; they score higher by 1 point on the happiness scale'

34. The phrase 'happier than’
TRUE: 'John is happier than Peter; he scores higher by 1 point on the
happiness scale’
happier than
FALSE: 'the Americans are happier than the French; they score higher
by 1 point on the happiness scale'

35. CONCLUSION
 experienced and evaluated well-being should both be measured
• the measures should be explicitly separated
 evaluation and memory are important on their own, because they play a significant role in decisions
(BUT NOT LIVING IN THE PAST)
 experienced well-being cannot be inferred with adequate precision from global reports of happiness or
life satisfaction

36. IV. OBJECTIVE HAPPINESS
AND THE LOGIC OF EXPERIENCED UTILITY
Jeremy Bentham's utility
 hedonic experience
 each moment -> pleasure or pain
 complex events -> intensity, duration,
certainty, fecundity
Jeremy Bentham
an English philosopher, jurist, and social
reformer, the founder of modern
utilitarianism (an ethical theory stating that
the best action is the one that maximizes
utility)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham
Decision utility
(decision theory & economics)
a way to summarize choice
Experienced utility
the benefit we get from experience
Moment Utility
(How good/bad is your experience now?)

37. EXPERIENCED WELL-BEING
(OBJECTIVE HAPPINESS)
EXPERIENCED UTILITY
 Meaningful outcomes = temporally extended
outcomes
<- temporal monotonicity
<- peak/end rule (adding an extra period of pain to an
episode of pain can only make things worse)
<- violations of monotonicity, both in retrospective
evaluations and in choices
TOTAL UTILITY
Moment utility
Duration of the episode

38. MEASURING THE WELLBEING
OF INDIVIDUALS OR POPULATIONS
the experience-sampling method (ESM)
participants - carry a hand-held computer
 - called at random moments during the waking day
 - answer questions about their current situation and their current
 feelings (moment utility)
ESM can be used to compare the well-being of populations that differ in their life circumstances =
objective happiness = moment-based, and draws only on immediate introspection
theoretical and empirical aspects of objective happiness
comparison with other approaches to the measurement of well-being

39. IS MOMENT UTILITY UNIDIMENSIONAL?
• EMS – downside –> depends on a single measure of moment utility as a building block
–> untrained introspection
–> reporting a single value of happiness or life satisfaction
• Are people – “capable of applying the scale coherently to headaches, pangs of guilt,
beautiful music, and the pleasure of hoping for a better future”?
– “capable of appropriately weighting such experiences whenever several
of them occur at the same moment”?

40. SINGLE-DIMENSIONED
EXPERIENCED UTILITY
 Upside
-> decision utility (approach & avoidance)
-> the basic distinction between good and bad moments
-> pleasure as the measure of well-being
= respondents are asked to indicate whether they feel
impatient for their current situation to end, or would
prefer for it to continue
(both eudaemonic and hedonic states)

41. SINGLE-QUESTION MOMENT UTILITY
“we do not recommend that moment utility be measured by a single question”
 vast affective experience:
- angry, afraid, sad, bored, humiliated, wasting time; we can be proud,
serene, involved, in control, pleased, purposeful, or affectionate
“ A single summary measure of objective happiness is useful, but it is not all we want to know
about the life of the experiencing self.”

42. MOMENT UTILITY
Psychological Approach
measured by collecting introspective
reports
Physiological approach
• the prefrontal cortical asymmetry in the
electroencephalogram (EEG)
• validated by Richard J. Davidson and his team as a
measure of the balance of positive and negative
feelings, and of the relative strength of tendencies
toward approach or avoidance
• a valid predictor of affective responses and of
approach/avoidance tendencies both within and
between persons
• a portable measuring instrument is not yet available,
but is technically feasible.
Richard J. Davidson - professor of psychology and psychiatry at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison as well as founder and chair of
the Center for Healthy Minds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Davidson

43. THE RATIONALE FOR SEPARABILITY
AND TIME NEUTRALITY
Requirements that the measure of moment utility must satisfy:
(1) reports of the sign of experience (positive or negative) can be trusted
(2) reports of the positive or negative intensity of the experience satisfy the
conditions of ordinal measurement;
(3) reports of experience are interpersonally comparable
(4) separability: the order in which moment utilities are experienced is not relevant to
total utility
(5) time neutrality: all moments have equal weights

44. SEPARABILITY AND TIME NEUTRALITY
separability
total utility is independent of the order in
which moment utilities are experienced
time neutrality
the contribution of a moment to the utility of
a longer episode is determined only by the
utility of that moment, not by its content

45. COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS
OF SEPARABILITY
Does the sequencing of experiences really matter?
moment utilities ≠ the events that give rise to those utilities
the order of events certainly matters to the total utility of a sequence
the order of utilities does not matter to the total utility of a sequence
Example:
-> the life of a 60-year-old woman
(different levels of happiness in her thirties and her forties)
-> the evaluation of her life as a whole does not depend
on the order of these experienced utilities

46. THE ORDER OF EVENTS
MATTERS WHEN …
their utilities are affected by it
Example:
a rich lunch <-> a strenuous tennis game
 their experienced utility is influenced by comparison processes
Example:
winning the lottery twice
in successive months
($1000 <-> $1 000 000 <->$100 000)

47. COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS
OF TIME NEUTRALITY
 Not all moments of life are equally significant or important.
 Wellbeing is increased by spending more time in the good states and less time in bad or
empty states.
Example of a privileged moment: the event of graduating from college
- both anticipated for a long time and frequently recalled
- changes in the individual's activities, circumstances,
self-image
“But the utility of the moment of graduation itself is not
privileged in the assessment of total utility. (…) it is just
another moment.”
“Time is the ultimate finite resource of life, and finding
ways to spend it well is a worthy objective both at the
individual level and at the level of a social policy that is
concerned with human well-being.”

48. V. MEASURING EXPERIENCED WELL-BEING:
THE DAY RECONSTRUCTION METHOD
the experience sampling
method (ESM)
• measuring & comparing the well-being of
populations
• downside
–> impractical
->places a high burden on respondents
-> severe constraints on recruitment and
compliance
the day reconstruction
method (DRM)
• assesses the experienced well-being of individuals and
populations
• identifies dissociations between experienced and
evaluated well-being
• a time-budget study
• a technique for recovering detailed information about
specific experiences from the previous day
• reproduces more efficiently the information collected by
measuring the experience immediately (ESM)

49. THE DAY RECONSTRUCTION METHOD (DRM)
• a structured questionnaire -> detailed description of a particular day in the respondent's life
• reviving memories of the previous day
• a short diary with five episodes
• describing each episode in detail
WHEN WHAT WHERE WHO HOW
did the episode
begin and end?
were you doing? were you? did you meet? did you feel?
(on a 0-6 scale)

50. A STUDY USING THE DRM
1018 WORKING WOMEN IN TEXAS
DRM CONCLUSIONS
mood negative = 34% of the time; tired = 76% of the time; impatient for it to end = 55%
the time
efficiency a more efficient substitute for experience sampling
mean enjoyment 4.68 = socialized with friends; 2.97 = commuting alone; 2.15 = interacting with one's
boss
mean enjoyment at work 2.88 = high time pressure (enjoyment lower than job satisfaction); 3.96 = low time
pressure
mean enjoyment over the
entire day
4.05 = very good sleep quality; 2.80 = very bad sleep quality
general correlations 0.05 = income and mean enjoyment; 0.20 = income and general life satisfaction
specific correlation 0.38 = life satisfaction, happiness and reported affect during a particular day
influences divorced women - lower life satisfaction than married women, but better
affect

51. VI. A POSSIBLE APPLICATION OF DRM :
COMPARING WELL-BEING ACROSS COUNTRIES
WHO IS HAPPIER, THE FRENCH OR THE AMERICANS?
Well-being: comparisons across countries and cultures -> national differences -> affect
Results:
the highest levels of average life satisfaction: northern European democracies
 the nations of the former Soviet Empire = very dissatisfied
the nations of South America are surprisingly happy
Arguments for: the problem of national differences has been solved
Arguments against: the differences between countries are too large to be plausible
Example:
the difference in life satisfaction between the US and France = the difference of life satisfaction between the
employed and the unemployed in the US
≃ the difference between US
respondents(household income > $75 000) and others ( household income = $10 000 - $20 000 in 1995)

52. WHO IS HAPPIER,
THE FRENCH OR THE AMERICANS?
Finding a measure of experience more compelling than a measure of satisfaction as an indicator of well-
being
- low satisfaction with life but consistent cheerfulness
Who is happier?
- high satisfaction with life but general sadness or anger
Conclusion:
• the experienced well-being of the average employed Frenchman = that of the average unemployed
American (?)
• the 18 wealthiest nations: the high correlation between health and happiness (0.85) = health =>
happiness
• self-reported health status (SRHS) ≠ adult life expectancy(r = -0.03)
- the French describe themselves as much less healthy than the Americans do, but they live 3
years longer.

53. WHO IS HAPPIER,
THE FRENCH OR THE AMERICANS?
self-reported life satisfaction ≠ objective happiness (?)
Could the French be objectively happier than the Americans, in spite of being less
satisfied?
a research design that might help to find the answer (national samples of countries that differ in measures of life
satisfaction)
- DRM + the Davidson index of PFCA (prefrontal cortical asymmetry as a means of
validating and/or correcting self-reports of moment utility
the physiological index
advantages: not susceptible to linguistic biases
calibrates the verbal reports of both experienced and evaluated well-being

54. CAN A PHYSIOLOGICAL INDEX BE USED
TO MEASURE OBJECTIVE HAPPINESS?
Data from a French and an American sample
1. physiological indicators of affect under standard resting conditions
2. self-reports of moment utility under the same conditions
3. physiological indicators of affect while focusing on various life domains
4. self-reports of moment utility under the same conditions
5. self-reports of life satisfaction
6. time spent in several activities (DRM: work & leisure)
7. self-reports of the experienced utility (DRM: work & leisure)
8. a summary measure of experienced well-being (objective happiness) 6 + 7

55. FOUR HYPOTHESES
HYPOTHESIS
1. The populations do not differ in the disposition to experience positive or negative moment utility.
2. The correlation between the physiological measures (1 and 3) and the self-report measures will be positive within subjects
within each of the two national groups.
3. The French will report lower life satisfaction (5) than the Americans.
4. The differences between the populations in measures of momentary experience (2 & 7) will be significantly smaller, or
null.
Conclusion: the only source of difference between the two populations in (duration-weighted) experienced well-being is the
amount of time they spend at leisure and at work => the French are happier than the Americans
Future: nearly continuous non-intrusive monitoring of physiological correlates of experienced utility, as a substitute and
supplement to the DRM and ESM

56. VII. CONCLUDING REMARKS
The experiences that make the moments of life worth living deserve to be studied.
If cultural differences regulate self-satisfaction but do not affect experienced well-being, well-being is better
indexed by the quality of experience
The French are grumpy about their lives, while experiencing more pleasure and less pain than the American
unemployed.
Social movements => dissatisfied people agree on the source of their dissatisfaction, and also
agree on what they want to do about it.
The relationship between the present analysis and the eudaemonic approach to well-being: there is more to life
than a favorable balance of pleasure and pain (authenticity, affection, participation, efficacy, and the full
utilization of human capabilities)

57. EUDAEMONIA
A GREEK WORD
happiness
welfare
human flourishing
the highest human good, according to Aristotle

58. “Experienced eudaemonia and evaluated
eudaemonia will be found to have different
antecedents and different consequences.’
“There is much to learn about the well-being
of the experiencing self.”

59. THE WORD HAPPINESS
IS NOT HAPPINESS,
NEITHER IS
THE THOUGHT OF IT.

60. THE EGG THAT DIDN’T LIKE TIME-TRAVELLING
by AIMEE T.L. KATHARTT
Yesterday I boiled an egg.
I boil eggs every day,
but this egg was different.
It didn’t let me wander.
I cared nothing about past
or future.
It kept me in the present.
So there I was,
stuck in the moment,
watching it play in boiling water
and thinking of nothing.
Not a single thing.
Just watching.
A blank mind is a free mind.
Of that I’m sure now.
Tomorrow
I’ll buy more eggs like this.