The alchemist
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"Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved"
Matthew A. Killingsworth, et. al., 2023, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120
Abstract:
Do larger incomes make people happier? Two authors of the present paper have published contradictory answers. Using dichotomous questions about the preceding day, [Kahneman and Deaton, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107, 16489–16493 (2010)] reported a flattening pattern: happiness increased steadily with log(income) up to a threshold and then plateaued. Using experience sampling with a continuous scale, [Killingsworth, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118, e2016976118 (2021)] reported a linear-log pattern in which average happiness rose consistently with log(income). We engaged in an adversarial collaboration to search for a coherent interpretation of both studies. A reanalysis of Killingsworth’s experienced sampling data confirmed the flattening pattern only for the least happy people. Happiness increases steadily with log(income) among happier people, and even accelerates in the happiest group. Complementary nonlinearities contribute to the overall linear-log relationship. We then explain why Kahneman and Deaton overstated the flattening pattern and why Killingsworth failed to find it. We suggest that Kahneman and Deaton might have reached the correct conclusion if they had described their results in terms of unhappiness rather than happiness; their measures could not discriminate among degrees of happiness because of a ceiling effect. The authors of both studies failed to anticipate that increased income is associated with systematic changes in the shape of the happiness distribution. The mislabeling of the dependent variable and the incorrect assumption of homogeneity were consequences of practices that are standard in social science but should be questioned more often. We flag the benefits of adversarial collaboration.
Really goes to show how binary correlative values are artificially fixed into a non-linear, complex environment masking complex response values between two nonconforming and non-symmetrically defined values for reductive reading. This resolved nothing in either direction, only gleamed a limited common sense at best. Moreover, scientific research skews when multi-edge layered methodology schemes are constructed to suss out information and used to specify an interpretation without showing a strong correlation to the actual phenomenon. The gaps between involved and folded contrived modeled systems and their selective connotations are why there is no acceptable diagonal correspondence, not to mention lower feasibility in replicability and lateral parity of explication and its projective elucidation in the real world.
