Well-Being Measurements and the Linearity Assumption: A Response to Wodak

ABSTRACT

Wodak (2019) persuasively argues that we are not justified in believing that well-being measurements are linear. From this, he infers grave consequences for both political philosophy thought experiments and empirical psychological research. Here I argue that these consequences do not follow. Wodak’s challenges to the status of well-being measurements do not affect thought experiments, and well-being empirical researchers may be justified in making average comparisons even if their measurements are not linear.

KEY WORDS:

• well-being measurement
• scales
• thought experiments
• Kahneman

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Anna Alexandrova, Lukas Beck, Jacob Stegenga, Daniel Wodak, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 More precisely, Wodak claims that they are either misleading or redundant. Here, I focus on the misleading side of the dilemma.

2 Daniel Wodak clarified that this is not the intended argument (personal communication).

3 I thank the referees and Wodak for correcting previous misunderstandings on my part about this argument.

4 I thank a referee for suggesting this hypothesis.

5 Peak bias is one part of Kahneman’s ‘peak-end bias’ thesis.

6 As Wodak says, a logarithmic scale would overturn peak bias. Such a scale is radically skewed: the increase in pain that takes us to report ‘9’ versus ‘8’ on this scale is ten thousand times the increase that takes us to report ‘5’ versus ‘4’. Less extremely skewed scales can also overturn peak bias in this example.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is based on research that was funded by Gates Cambridge Trust.