In this paper, we investigate how the impatience that results from placing a price on time impairs individuals' ability to derive happiness from pleasurable experiences. Experiment 1 demonstrated that thinking about one's income as an hourly wage reduced the happiness that participants derived from leisure time on the internet. Experiment 2 revealed that a similar manipulation decreased participants' state of happiness after listening to a...

What do social survey data tell us about the determinants of happiness? First, that the psychologists' setpoint model is questionable. Life events in the nonpecuniary domain, such as marriage, divorce, and serious disability, have a lasting effect on happiness, and do not simply deflect the average person temporarily above or below a setpoint given by genetics and personality. Second, mainstream economists' inference that in the...

Social scientists and policymakers have long been interested in comparing the subjective well-being (SWB) of populations over time and across countries, although SWB is hard to define and measure. Nevertheless, attempts have been made to rank countries based on SWB (e.g., Veenhoven 1996; OECD 2005). Cross-country data have also been used to study the effect on SWB of public policies, economic conditions and institutions (e.g.,...

In OECD countries, watching television is by far the most time-consuming form of leisure. Surprisingly, television viewing is positively correlated with work hours across countries. A simple model based on the notion of aggregate strategic complementarities in social leisure, that explains such a pattern as the result of multiple equilibria, is developed. Workers and capitalists are shown to exhibit opposite preference orderings over equilibria. The...

Objective: To examine whether—and why—people underestimate how much they enjoy exercise. Design: Across four studies, 279 adults predicted how much they would enjoy exercising, or reported their actual feelings after exercising. Main Outcome Measures: Main outcome measures were predicted and actual enjoyment ratings of exercise routines, as well as intention to exercise. Results: Participants significantly underestimated how much they would enjoy exercising; this affective forecasting...

 This article summarizes the findings from Aguiar and Hurst (2007, 2008) with respect to changes in time allocation—particularly leisure—within the United States during the last four decades. Included in our measure of leisure is all time people spend watching television, playing sports, socializing with friends and family, reading, engaging in hobbies, and relaxing. The results from Aguiar and Hurst indicate that leisure has increased for...

 To identify the factors that disrupt and maintain habit performance, two field experiments tested the conditions under which people eat out of habit, leading them to resist motivational influences. Habitual popcorn eaters at a cinema were minimally influenced by their hunger or how much they liked the food, and they ate equal amounts of stale and fresh popcorn. Yet, mechanisms of automaticity influenced habit performance:...

 We investigated the long-standing—yet previously untested—idea that an abundance of desirable life experiences may undermine people’s ability to savor simpler pleasures. In Study 1, we found that the more countries individuals had visited, the less inclined they were to savor a future trip to a pleasant but ordinary destination. In Study 2, we conducted a field experiment at a popular tourist attraction, where we manipulated...

Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers’ extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television-viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their enjoyment diminishes over time. Commercial interruptions can disrupt this adaptation process and restore the intensity of consumers’ enjoyment. Six studies demonstrate that, although people preferred to avoid commercial...

 Far more attention has been paid to emotion regulation in childhood than in adulthood and old age. However, a growing body of empirical research suggests that the emotion domain is largely spared from deleterious processes associated with aging and points instead to developmental gains in later life. By applying tenets from socioemotional selectivity theory, we attempt to explain the observed gains in terms of motivation....