From wealth to well-being? Money matters, but less than people think

摘要

While numerous studies have documented the modest (though reliable) link between household income andwell-being, we examined the accuracy of laypeople's intuitions about this relationship by asking people fromacross the income spectrum to report their own happiness and to predict the happiness of others (Study 1) andthemselves (Study 2) at different income levels. Data from two national surveys revealed that while laypeople'spredictions were relatively accurate at higher levels of income, they greatly overestimated the impact of incomeon life satisfaction at lower income levels, expecting low household income to be coupled with very low lifesatisfaction. Thus, people may work hard to maintain or increase their income in part because they overestimatethe hedonic costs of earning low levels of income.