Who to Believe? Psychology or Economics?

Both psychology and economics have much to offer happiness studies. Psychology is much more receptive to accepting people’s self-reports of their attitudes and feelings and has been the pioneer in vetting measures of happiness and establishing their credibility. Conceptually, psychology’s emphasis on the role of benchmarks in people’s thinking correctly explains how people form happiness judgments. For its part, economics focuses more on state-of-life evaluative gauges of well-being rather than experiential measures reflecting transient moods and prefers conceptually clearer single-item to multi-item indicators. Economists tend too to put less reliance on cross-section vis-a-vis time-series research and emphasize nationally representative population samples as a basis for generalization. Most notably, economics demonstrates the importance of life circumstances in shaping happiness trends and differences. The disciplines together combine to promote a robust, interdisciplinary field.