"Fooled by Randomness" talks about the same phenomenon: People are more likely to pursue an investment strategy that demonstrates common, small increases in value while exposing them to rare, large decreases over one with common, small decreases in value while exposing them to rare, large increases, because it's psychologically difficult to persist while seeing bad results every day even if the magnitude of those bad results is so small so as to be inconsequential.
Like most "happiness research", this seems to rely on dodgy methodology and be aimed at some sort of political agenda. Ooh, and here it is:
So what are the policy implications for this new research. The researchers said single-shot events such as a tax cut will probably have little impact on people's happiness. By contrast, "policies that lead to small but repeated gains are likely to succeed."
Well, for starters, who says that a tax cut is a "single shot event"? A tax cut would give me more money every single month, which I could then use to buy more of those "lots of little events".
Yeah, that sounds weird. (Maybe they were thinking of the single-shot "tax rebates" that have been given out?) But which methodology did you think was dodgy?
Well, I think the main problem is that running up to people and asking them how "happy" they are isn't a very good measure of their overall well-being.
