on to netvrdí len tak, opiera sa o psychologický výskum: sú tam citované práce v podkapitole WHY SELF-ASSESSMENTS OF ONE’S LIFE’S QUALITY ARE UNRELIABLE

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The first, most general and most influential of these psychological
phenomena is what some have called the Pollyanna Principle,⁷ atendency towards optimism.⁸ This manifests in many ways. First,
there is an inclination to recall positive rather than negative exper-
iences. For example, when asked to recall events from throughout
their lives, subjects in a number of studies listed a much great-
er number of positive than negative experiences.⁹ This selective
recall distorts our judgement of how well our lives have gone
so far. It is not only assessments of our past that are biased, but
also our projections or expectations about the future. We tend to
have an exaggerated view of how good things will be.¹⁰ The Pol-
lyannaism typical of recall and projection is also characteristic of
subjective judgements about current and overall well-being. Many
studies have consistently shown that self-assessments of well-being
are markedly skewed toward the positive end of the spectrum.¹¹ For instance, very few people describe themselves as ‘not too happy’.
Instead, the overwhelming majority claims to be either ‘pretty
happy’ or ‘very happy’.¹² Indeed, most people believe that they
are better off than most others or than the average person.¹³

Most of the factors that plausibly improve the quality of a
person’s life do not commensurately influence self-assessments
of that quality (where they influence them at all). For example,
although there is a correlation between people’s own rankings
of their health and their subjective assessments of well-being,
objective assessments of people’s health, judging by physical
symptoms, are not as good a predictor of peoples’ subjective
evaluations of their well-being.¹⁴ Even among those whose
dissatisfaction with their health does lead to lower self-reported
well-being, most report levels of satisfaction toward the positive
end of the spectrum.¹⁵ Within any given country,¹⁶ the poor
are nearly (but not quite) as happy as the rich are. Nor do
education and occupation make much (even though they do makesome) difference.¹⁷ Although there is some disagreement about
how much each of the above and other factors affect subjective
assessments of well-being, it is clear that even the sorts of events
that one would have thought would make people ‘very unhappy’
have this effect on only a very small proportion of people.¹⁸