Health, Wealth, and Wellbeing Flashcards
Does money make you happier?
- Overall, income is a small but very robust predictor of life satisfaction (Boyce et al, 2010)
- But losses loom larger than gains (Loss aversion: Kahneman & Tversky, 1979)
- Therefore, need to consider losses as well as gain
Does losing money make you more unhappy? Not having money makes people quite unhappy (Boes & Winkelmann, 2010)
what is prospect theory?
a psychology theory that describes how people make decisions when presented with alternatives that involve risk, probability, and uncertainty
what is loss aversion?
a cognitive bias that describes why, for individuals, the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining
Conscientiousness Predicts how Life Satisfaction responds to losses versus gains in Income, Boyce, Wood and Ferguson (2015)
- Loss Aversion deemed a ‘universal’ in Prospect Theory
- Conscientiousness, although usually adaptive, is also characterized by a rigidity of thought and obsessiveness.
- Conscientious individuals place great value on economic outcomes
- Conscientious individuals put more effort into achieving their goals
- the loss of that outcome might be appraised as due to lack of their own ability (stable and general cause of failure) as opposed to a lack of effort).
- Therefore, losses should loom larger for those higher in conscientiousness
based on a representative sample of 105,558 Germans, looses loom larger and more so for those high in conscientiousness
Personality, marriage and happiness, Boyce, Wood and Ferguson (2016)
- Pre-Marriage Personality to predict life satisfaction before and during marriage
- Again uses SOEP panel data: very large study of German households, running since 1980s, refreshed over time, but some people tracked for many years.
- For Women only: High conscientiousness linked to increased satisfaction over the years of marriage.
- This is because conscientious individuals place more value on relationship goals may strive harder to ensure success
- For women introversion is associated with increased satisfaction across marriage, for men its extraversion
How can personality influence the performance and training in the work place?
We are interested in performance (how many calls you take, how much money is made) or are we interested in training (how well you learn to do the job).
How can personality influence within job changes in the work place?
The nature of the job is likely to change as technology develop and as your skills as an employee change and you are promoted
Conscientiousness and IQ survival curves
- see OneNote for graphs
- men die sooner than women
- affect of conscientiousness, people with lower levels of conscientiousness die sooner
- could be due to lower conscientiousness take more risks so at higher risk being in an accident
- high cognitive function protective of mortality
- Higher IQ is a protective factor against certain diseases which would lower IQ like alzheimer’s
Neuroticism and mortality
- higher levels of neuroticism are associated with sharp increases in mortality
- could be indirect through the impact that neuroticism has on mental health
Traits and compliance with taking medication
- Conscientiousness people tend to take their treatment as they are supposed to and for the full amount of time
- compared to someone with depression who will tend to stop once they feel better
Compliance when neurotic and taking medication, Molloy, O’ Carroll and Ferguson (2014)
- People with high levels of neuroticism show lower levels of antibody response than others
- meaning they get a disease it is more difficult to fight
what is a viral challenge study in terms of health and personality?
- Expose 50% to a pathogen and 50% to a placebo. Keep in isolation. Examine for 1 to 2 weeks
- Randomized controlled trial
- Can make causal inference
what is a quasi experiment in terms of health and personality?
Examine people at high and low stress times. Usually done on the same students during exams and vacation times
what is case control designs in terms of health and personality?
Compare different high stressed and low stressed groups (e.g., carers vs. general population)
what are some ways of measuring signs of disease?
- Signs (clinical blood tests)
- Symptoms (what people report)