Looking up and looking down: Weighting good and bad information in life satisfaction judgments

Ed Diener, Richard E. Lucas, Shigehiro Oishi, Eunkook M. Suh

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

64 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In two large international studies, the authors examined whether happy and unhappy individuals weighted life domains differently when constructing life satisfaction judgments. In both studies, regression equations predicting life satisfaction showed that there were significant interactions between happiness and a person's best domain and between happiness and a person's worst domain, even after controlling for participants' standing on all other domains. Happy participatifs weighted their best domains more heavily than did unhappy individuals, whereas unhappy individuals weighted their worst domains more heavily than did happy individuals. Thus, happy and unhappy people used different information when constructing satisfaction judgments.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)437-445
Number of pages9
JournalPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Volume28
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2002 Apr

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Social Psychology

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