Happiness and self-deception: An old question examined by a new measure of subjective well-being
The development and application of a new measure of subjective well-being, the Life Satisfaction Research Questionnaire, is discussed. The major new contribution that this instrument makes to the study of happiness is allowing subjects to distinguish between their satisfaction with the circumstances of their lives and with what they have made of those circumstances. Two separate studies involving repeated administrations (over a period of three months) to under-graduates investigated the relationship between life satisfaction and a tendency to engage in self-deception. Results found that subjects high in self-deception tended to give greater weight to what they felt they had made of their lives than to their life circumstances. Following discussion of the results, recommendations are made for further study.