PDF Ebook Happiness and Productivity
There is a large economics literature on individual and economy-wide productivity. There is also a fast-growing one on the measurement of individuals’ mental well-being. Yet economists know little about the interplay between emotions and human productivity. Although people’s happiness and effort decisions seem likely to be deeply intertwined, we lack evidence on whether, and how, they are causally connected.
This paper seeks to make two contributions. First, it attempts to alert economists to a psychology literature in which happiness (or more precisely what psychologists describe as positive affect) has been shown to be associated with higher human performance. Here the work of the psychologist Alice Isen has been particularly important. The second contribution of the paper is to design and perform an empirical inquiry that has not been done in the psychology literature. It addresses a question of particular interest to economists (and perhaps to policy-makers). Does happiness make people more productive in a paid task? We provide evidence in a standardized piece rate setting with otherwise fairly well-understood properties that it does.
Argyle (1989 a,b) points out that little is known about how life satisfaction affects productivity, but that there is some (mixed) evidence that job satisfaction shows ‘modestly positive correlations’ with measures of worker productivity. Wright and Staw (1999) examine links between worker affect and supervisors’ ratings of workers, and, depending on the affect measure, find rather mixed results. In contrast to our paper, Sanna et al (1996) argue that those in a negative mood put forth the most effort. Amabile et al (2005) finds that happiness appears to provoke greater creativity.
We shall not distinguish in any stark way between happiness and ‘mood’. We take the distinction, in a short run experiment as ours, to be largely semantic or philosophical. Nor shall we discuss the possibility that other stimuli such as music, alcohol or sheer relaxation time – all mentioned by readers of early drafts – could have the same or equivalent effects.
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PDF Ebook Happiness and Productivity
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