Proto, Eugenio and Sgroi, Daniel (2010) Bias in the relative assessment of happiness, political stance, height and weight. Working Paper. University of Warwick. Dept. of Economics, Coventry.

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Abstract

Cognitive biases have been a recognised feature of research into human behaviour since at least Kahneman and Tversky’s ground-breaking work of the 1970s. We find that such biases extend into the realm of perceptions about relative happiness and we compare and contrast this phenomenon across three other characteristics: height, weight and political stance. Our findings indicate a powerful and consistent bias in the way individuals perceive their place in the population distribution. In particular, those at extremes perceive a population distribution that is incorrectly and heavily biased towards themselves, irrespective of whether the characteristic is objective and easily observed or not.

Item Type:	Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Social sciences -- Research, Psychological tests, Happiness -- Testing, Body image -- Testing
Series Name:	Warwick economics research paper series (TWERPS)
Publisher:	University of Warwick. Dept. of Economics
Place of Publication:	Coventry
Date:	2010
Volume:	Vol.2010
Number:	No.943
Status:	Not Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Funder:	Leverhulme Trust (LT)
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URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/3508

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