Beyond Money
Policy decisions at the organizational, corporate, and governmental levels should be more heavily influenced by issues related to well-being—people's evaluations and feelings about their lives. Domestic policy currently focuses heavily on economic outcomes, although economic indicators omit, and even mislead about, much of what society values. We show that economic indicators have many shortcomings, and that measures of well-being point to important conclusions that are not apparent from economic indicators alone. For example, although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust. We argue that economic indicators were extremely important in the early stages of economic development, when the fulfillment of basic needs was the main issue. As societies grow wealthy, however, differences in well-being are less frequently due to income, and are more frequently due to factors such as social relationships and enjoyment at work. Important noneconomic predictors of the average levels of well-being of societies include social capital, democratic governance, and human rights. In the workplace, noneconomic factors influence work satisfaction and profitability. It is therefore important that organizations, as well as nations, monitor the well-being of workers, and take steps to improve it. Assessing the well-being of individuals with mental disorders casts light on policy problems that do not emerge from economic indicators. Mental disorders cause widespread suffering, and their impact is growing, especially in relation to the influence of medical disorders, which is declining. Although many studies now show that the suffering due to mental disorders can be alleviated by treatment, a large proportion of persons with mental disorders go untreated. Thus, a policy imperative is to offer treatment to more people with mental disorders, and more assistance to their caregivers. Supportive, positive social relationships are necessary for well-being. There are data suggesting that well-being leads to good social relationships and does not merely follow from them. In addition, experimental evidence indicates that people suffer when they are ostracized from groups or have poor relationships in groups. The fact that strong social relationships are critical to well-being has many policy implications. For instance, corporations should carefully consider relocating employees because doing so can sever friendships and therefore be detrimental to well-being. Desirable outcomes, even economic ones, are often caused by well-being rather than the other way around. People high in well-being later earn higher incomes and perform better at work than people who report low well-being. Happy workers are better organizational citizens, meaning that they help other people at work in various ways. Furthermore, people high in well-being seem to have better social relationships than people low in well-being. For example, they are more likely to get married, stay married, and have rewarding marriages. Finally, well-being is related to health and longevity, although the pathways linking these variables are far from fully understood. Thus, well-being not only is valuable because it feels good, but also is valuable because it has beneficial consequences. This fact makes national and corporate monitoring of well-being imperative. In order to facilitate the use of well-being outcomes in shaping policy, we propose creating a national well-being index that systematically assesses key well-being variables for representative samples of the population. Variables measured should include positive and negative emotions, engagement, purpose and meaning, optimism and trust, and the broad construct of life satisfaction. A major problem with using current findings on well-being to guide policy is that they derive from diverse and incommensurable measures of different concepts, in a haphazard mix of respondents. Thus, current findings provide an interesting sample of policy-related findings, but are not strong enough to serve as the basis of policy. Periodic, systematic assessment of well-being will offer policymakers a much stronger set of findings to use in making policy decisions.
Appraising and Amending Theories: The Strategy of Lakatosian Defense and Two Principles that Warrant It
In social science, everything is somewhat correlated with everything (“crud factor”), so whether H0 is refuted depends solely on statistical power. In psychology, the directional counternull of interest, H*, is not equivalent to the substantive theory T, there being many plausible alternative explanations of a mere directional trend (weak use of significance tests). Testing against a predicted point value (the strong use of significant tests) can discorroborate T by refuting H*. If used thus to abandon T forthwith, it is too strong, not allowing for theoretical verisimilitude as distinguished from truth. Defense and amendment of an apparently falsified T are appropriate strategies only when T has accumulated a good track record (“money in the bank”) by making successful or near-miss predictions of low prior probability (Salmon’s “damn strange coincidences”). Two rough indexes are proposed for numerifying the track record, by considering jointly how intolerant (risky) and how close (accurate) are its predictions.
time series decision making reinforcement learning mathematical model decision support system embedded system magnetic resonance magnetic resonance imaging united kingdom breast cancer developing country resonance imaging motion planning confidence interval humanoid robot social science experimental design linear algebra nash equilibrium data assimilation standard deviation black box autoregressive model functional magnetic resonance interest rate exchange rate design of experiments process capability prostate cancer fuzzy environment functional magnetic triangular fuzzy number rate model citizen science scientific publication open-source software choice behavior econometric model programming paradigm ordinary least square business cycle prefrontal cortex tumor cell process capability indice evaluation procedure capability indice risk aversion breast cancer patient hearing impairment mental disorder digital object identifier humanoid robotic demand function federal reserve trade credit aggregate datum sample variance major depressive disorder monetary policy entropy maximization major depressive circulating tumor cell circulating tumor mobile money cross-sectional datum marginal model rejection sampling policy rule cell nucleu financial cost mood disorder interpretation proces real interest rate trust game institutional investor nucleus accumben learning disorder money demand metastatic breast accidental fall positive theory genetic heterogeneity review [publication type] word list by frequency neuritis, autoimmune, experimental projections and prediction occur (action) departure - action job stream value (ethics) exhibits as topic reuse (action) contain (action) cellular targeting null value advance directive - proxy benchmark (computing) collections (publication) coping behavior deny (action) hearing loss, high-frequency revision procedure rem sleep behavior disorder codependency (psychology) pervasive informatic amygdaloid structure sensorineural hearing loss (disorder) norm (social) contingency (philosophy) behaviorial habit choose (action) persistence (computer science) eighty nine neoplasm metastasi columbia (supercomputer) expectation–maximization algorithm relocation of home or business manufactured supply mediator brand of benfluorex hydrochloride public-private sector partnership academia (organization) document completion status - documented entity–relationship model sex characteristic uc browser mike lesser the australian nat friedman lars bak (computer programmer) research support as topic lars gene substance-related disorder expected utility hypothesi fama im economic complexity index metastatic carcinoma conflict (psychology) rule (guideline) kind of quantity - equilibrium john d. wiley baseline (configuration management) transaction counts and value totals - contract contract agreement standards characteristic file spanning ephrin type-b receptor 1, human published comment copy (object) arabic numeral 0 united state