Measuring happiness under interpersonal comparison: An advanced theoretical framework and implications

The origin of happiness arouses people’s curiosity for a long time. Recent research introduces a utility theory for measuring subjective happiness in a social context. The past recent monetary conditions influence the present subjective happiness through two distinct channels: interpersonal comparison and self-adaptation. In this paper, we develop this theory to analyze behavioral patterns. Together with prospect theory’s gain-loss utility function, we exploit the theory in predicting psychological phenomena of craving. We explore the relationships between happiness and earnings. Under certain conditions, a high payoff disappoints you immediately and even leads to continuous disappointment across periods. We extend the explanations of the scenarios of New York cabdrivers’ labor-supply decisions. The effect of social comparisons may trigger workers’ behaviors of quit-working, which deepen related understandings of the literature.

Interpersonal Comparison of Utility by Measuring Neural Activity

Aggregating welfare across individuals to reach collective decisions is one of the most fundamental problems in our society. Interpersonal comparison of utility is pivotal and inevitable for welfare aggregation, because if each person's utility is not interpersonally comparable, there is no rational aggregation procedure that simultaneously satisfies even some very mild conditions for validity (Arrow's impossibility theorem). However, scientific methods for interpersonal comparison of utility have thus far not been available. Here, we have developed a method for interpersonal comparison of utility based on brain signals, by measuring the neural activity of participants performing gambling tasks. We found that activity in the medial frontal region was correlated with changes in expected utility, and that, for the same amount of money, the activity evoked was larger for participants with lower household incomes than for those with higher household incomes. Furthermore, we found that the ratio of neural signals from lower-income participants to those of higher-income participants coincided with estimates of their psychological pleasure by "impartial spectators", i.e. disinterested third-party participants satisfying specific conditions. Finally, we derived a decision rule based on aggregated welfare from our experimental data, and confirmed that it was applicable to a distribution problem. These findings suggest that our proposed method for interpersonal comparison of utility enables scientifically reasonable welfare aggregation by escaping from Arrow's impossibility and has implications for the fair distribution of economic goods. Our method can be further applied for evidence-based policy making in nations that use cost-benefit analyses or optimal taxation theory for policy evaluation.

Student motivation theory

The article examines the relevant native and foreign theories of sports activity (SA) motivation. The results of scientific research in this area are analyzed, recommendations for identifying the type and increasing the level of motivation of athletes are presented. Theoretical analysis and generalization of literary data allowed to single out individual demonstrations in the formation of sports motivation, the importance of the influence of self-esteem, the influence of temperament, the influence of the level of anxiety in athletes on the formation of motivation was established. The conditions for the formation of sports motivation have been determined. For high results in sports, the motivation of the athlete at all stages of training has a significant impact. The focus on interpersonal comparison and victory develops competitive motivation, competitiveness. The development of internal and external motivation ensures the formation of goals and objectives of sports activities, favorable stable motives, and leads to the improvement of sports skills. Based on the current literary discussion, we have identified the motives that presumably provide long-term motivation for engaging in sports and the motives that are likely to be perceived as reducing it.

Pay-for-Performance and Interpersonal Deviance

Many organizations use pay-for-performance (PfP) programs in order to fuel employee motivation and performance. In the present article, we argue that PfP may also increase employees’ interpersonal deviance (i.e., active harming behavior toward coworkers) because it might induce social comparison and competition. In order to uncover the underlying process, we further argue that this effect should be particularly pronounced for employees who are high in individual competitiveness, that is, employees who have a strong desire for interpersonal comparison and aspire to be better than others. A cross-sectional field study (N = 250) and two experiments (N = 92; N = 192) provide support for our interaction hypothesis. We discuss the theoretical implications regarding PfP and competitiveness, and offer suggestions concerning the practical implementation of PfP.