Luca Corazzini (Università di Messina) on "Unpacking the Determinants of Life Satisfaction: A Survey Experiment"

We present results of a survey experiment aimed at assessing con-
text effects on subjects' reported life satisfaction, exerted by raising
awareness of fundamental life domains - income, family, job, friends,
sentimental relationships and health - through questionnaire manipu-
lations. While simply presenting subjects with the list of the domains
before evaluating overall life satisfaction has no effect on the distribu-
tion of life satisfaction, asking subjects to report their satisfaction with
each life domain strongly affects overall evaluations. In particular, we
detect a robust unpacking effect, whereby reporting satisfaction with
life domains significantly increases the subsequent overall life satisfac-
tion evaluations. In addition, raising awareness of life domains signif-
icantly increases precision (as it reduces the dispersion of responses)
and accuracy (by increasing the association between life satisfaction
and life domain evaluations) of self-reported levels of life satisfaction.