728 vII. APPLICATIONS  AND  IMPLICATIONS
that were considerably lower than individu -
als living in more affluent circumstances. 
Similarly, individuals with severe spinal cord 
injuries or other lasting disabilities tend to 
report well-being scores that are much lower 
than those of individuals without such inju -
ries (Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-  Bulman, 
1978; Dijkers, 1997; Lucas, 2007b).
It is also the case that SWB measures pre -
dict relevant behaviors and outcomes. For 
instance, Koivumaa-  Honkanen and col -
leagues have examined the predictive validity 
of self-  report life satisfaction and happiness 
measures in a sample of over 29,000 Finnish 
adults (mostly twins) who were followed for 
up to 20 years. Their analyses show that life 
satisfaction prospectively predicts outcomes 
that include suicide (Koivumaa-  Honkanen, 
Honkanen, Koskenvuo, & Kaprio, 2003; 
Koivumaa-  Honkanen et al., 2001) and the 
onset of depression (Koivumaa-  Honkanen, 
Kaprio, Honkanen, Viinamäki, & Kosken -
vuo, 2004). These results show that people 
who say they are unsatisfied do things that 
psychologists would expect unsatisfied peo -
ple to do.
Of course, this evidence does not mean 
that SWB measures are beyond reproach. 
Researchers have raised serious challenges 
to the validity, and these challenges must 
be acknowledged and addressed by any psy -
chologist who wishes to use these measures. 
For instance, Schwarz, Strack, and their 
colleagues have argued that a variety of ir -
relevant contextual factors (including minor 
changes in instructions, setting, question 
wording, question order, or response op -
tions) can have a strong influence on well- 
being judgments, and that these reports 
should not be trusted. For instance, in a 
study that is often cited as evidence for the 
malleability of well-being reports, Strack, 
Martin, and Schwarz (1988) showed that 
simply changing the order of two questions 
could dramatically influence the correlation 
between them. In their study, when questions 
about satisfaction with a specific domain 
(e.g., relationship satisfaction) preceded a 
question about general life satisfaction, the 
correlation between the two measures was 
strong, but when the general life satisfaction 
question was asked first, however, then the 
two measures correlated quite weakly. This 
pattern of associations suggests that asking about specific life domains makes informa -
tion about these domains salient when an in -
dividual is later asked to judge his or her life 
as a whole. It also implies that life satisfac -
tion judgments are constructed “on the fly” 
and are susceptible to irrelevant contextual 
effects.
Schwarz and Strack (1990) have amassed 
an impressive body of research that provides 
insight into the processes that underlie self- 
reported judgments of well-being. They con -
cluded that one might interpret this body 
of evidence to mean that “there is little to 
be learned from self-  reports of global well-
being” and that “what is being assessed, 
and how, seems too context-  dependent to 
provide reliable information about a popu -
lation’s well-being” (p. 80). However, we 
believe that such statements are much too 
strong and are not supported by the large 
body of evidence showing that SWB mea -
sures are stable and valid. Experimental 
studies in controlled laboratory settings 
reveal important information about the 
processes that may underlie complex psy -
chological phenomena. But it is important 
to remember that demonstrating that such 
processes exist does not reveal the extent 
to which these processes affect real-world 
judgments. Additional research is needed 
to determine the extent to which irrelevant 
contextual factors influence SWB measures, 
and existing research suggests that these in -
fluences are not strong.
For instance, Schimmack and Oishi 
(2005) conducted a meta-  analysis of stud -
ies that had manipulated the order of life 
satisfaction and domain satisfaction ratings 
(along with five new replication studies of 
their own) showing that the item-order ef -
fect that Strack et al. (1988) identified is, 
on average, quite small. In addition, Schim -
mack and Oishi (2005), along with Schim -
mack, Diener, and Oishi (2002), showed 
that people tend to use chronically accessible 
information rather than transient sources of 
information when constructing well-being 
judgments.
More recently, Yap et al. (2017) conduct -
ed nine studies in an attempt to replicate 
the classic findings by Schwarz and Clore 
(1983), showing that life satisfaction judg -
ments are strongly influenced by mood at 
the time of judgment. In the original stud -