How to tell a happy person: Accuracy of subjective well-being perception from texts

Olga Stavrova,Lena Haarmann

doi:10.1007/s11031-019-09815-4

Olga Stavrova, Lena Haarmann

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-019-09815-4

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Journal: Motivation and Emotion	Publication Date: Nov 4, 2019
Citations: 8	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Tilburg University, University of Cologne

Abstract

Although perceptions of subjective well-being (SWB) in unacquainted others have been shown to play a major role in impression formation, little is known about how accurate such perceptions are. In two original studies and one pre-registered replication, we explored the accuracy of life satisfaction and happiness judgments from texts and its underlying mechanisms (use of linguistic cues). Participants filled in life satisfaction and happiness measures and completed a brief writing task. Another sample of participants judged the targets’ life satisfaction and happiness from the obtained texts. All three studies demonstrated a small to moderate self-other agreement. A linguistic analysis showed that targets with higher (vs. lower) scores on SWB were less likely to use negation words in their texts, which allowed observers to make accurate judgment of their SWB level. Two studies pointed at negative emotion words as valid and positive emotion words as invalid (but often used) cues to happiness, yet these effects did not replicate in Study 3.

Highlights

Across two types of texts— travel reports and creative writing—we explored whether independent observers can make accurate ratings of targets’ subjective well-being (SWB) and the utilization of what linguistic cues allows this accuracy
To test whether the differential use of anger and anxiety words by satisfied versus less satisfied targets insured a better than chance accuracy in raters’ judgment of targets’ life satisfaction, we examined whether anger and anxiety words mediated the effect of self-rated life satisfaction on other-rated life satisfaction
We estimated the effect of the independent variable on the mediators and the effect of the mediators on the dependent variable in separate multilevel regression equations

Summary

Introduction

A comparison of cue utilization and cue validity indicators (Table 1) suggests that two out of four linguistic cues that observers relied on were associated with targets’ self-rated life satisfaction: anger and anxiety words. The linguistic analyses showed that to judge targets’ life satisfaction, raters extensively relied on targets’ use of emotion words, in particular, positive, negative, anger and anxiety words.

Results

Conclusion