Stability of Happiness by Sheldon Kennon M Lucas Richard E. & Richard E. Lucas

Author:Sheldon, Kennon M, Lucas, Richard E. & Richard E. Lucas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780124105386
Publisher: Elsevier Science
Published: 2014-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

The question of whether happiness can change is probably the first and most important question that SWB researchers must tackle. Before we can develop theories about the processes underlying well-being and before we can create programs to improve well-being, it would be helpful to have basic descriptive data on the extent to which SWB does, in fact, change over time. Indeed, the surprising results from early studies that addressed this question—results that suggested that happiness does not change—captured the attention of researchers and laypeople alike and shifted attention to personality factors as one of the most important predictors of well-being. Although we, too, believe that the study of personality predictors provides an important method for understanding the processes underlying well-being judgments, we also believe that the conclusions regarding the stability of well-being were overstated.

In this chapter, we reviewed recent research that uses multiwave longitudinal designs to re-evaluate conclusions from earlier studies that used weaker designs. This newer research shows that stability is not so great as to discourage theoretical and applied work that examines the causes of change. It is true that many specific questions from this research are not yet settled. We do not know with certainty, for instance, whether or not marriage, on average, has a positive causal effect on levels of life satisfaction. The reason is that different models provide somewhat different answers (although the differences are not large), and even the best methods leave some causal questions still open. However, research into the associations between life events and SWB provides relatively strong evidence that some changes—and even some large changes—do occur when people experience major life events.

And perhaps most importantly, the extremely large, multiwave panel studies that have been conducted now allow researchers to estimate, with some degree of precision, the size of long-term test–retest correlations. The results of these studies have been remarkably consistent, and these results show that the stabilities are low enough to suggest that considerable changes do occur on average. Correlations over long periods of time tend to bottom out somewhere between .25 and .30, even though the year-to-year correlations are often between .60 and .70 (which suggests that the weak long-term stabilities are not due to poor reliability). This fact alone should be encouraging to researchers who hope to identify the factors that lead to change.

This evidence does not mean that there are no challenges to be faced in the study of change. For instance, at a population level, change has been quite slow, and it is not clear whether major societal changes lead to similar changes in well-being (e.g., Deaton, 2012; Easterlin, 1995). Similarly, although work on individual-level interventions is progressing, there is still no sure-fire method for creating large and lasting changes in well-being. This may be due to limitations in our theories about the processes underlying well-being, which would mean that the normal progress of science should lead to improvements in these areas. However, there may also be specific mechanisms that make intentional change difficult. Whichever is true,

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