title: Overstatement in happiness reporting with ordinal, bounded scale.
abstract: There are various methods by which people can express subjective evaluations quantitatively. For example, happiness can be measured on a scale from 1 to 10, and has been suggested as a measure of economic policy. However, there is resistance to these types of measurement from economists, who often regard welfare to be a cardinal, unbounded quantity. It is unclear whether there are differences between subjective evaluation reported on ordinal, bounded scales and on cardinal, unbounded scales. To answer this question, we developed functional magnetic resonance imaging experimental tasks for reporting happiness from monetary gain and the perception of visual stimulus. Subjects tended to report higher values when they used ordinal scales instead of cardinal scales. There were differences in neural activation between ordinal and cardinal reporting scales. The posterior parietal area showed greater activation when subjects used an ordinal scale instead of a cardinal scale. Importantly, the striatum exhibited greater activation when asked to report happiness on an ordinal scale than when asked to report on a cardinal scale. The finding that ordinal (bounded) scales are associated with higher reported happiness and greater activation in the reward system shows that overstatement bias in happiness data must be considered.
authors.affiliation: Brain Information Communication Research Laboratory Group, Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute International, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto 619-0288, Japan.|Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan.
authors.forename: Saori C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.affiliation: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan.|Faculty of Economics, Kindai University, Higashi-osaka, Osaka 577-0813, Japan.
authors.forename: Katsunori
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yamada
authors.affiliation: Division of Cerebral Integration, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Aichi 444-8585, Japan.
authors.forename: Ryo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kitada
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Psychology, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka 431-3192, Japan.
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.affiliation: Division of Cerebral Integration, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Aichi 444-8585, Japan.
authors.forename: Sho K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Sugawara
authors.affiliation: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan.
authors.forename: Fumio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ohtake
authors.affiliation: Division of Cerebral Integration, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Aichi 444-8585, Japan.
authors.forename: Norihiro
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sadato
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D057566:Self Report; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors