[vatican_banker]

> the study doesn't measure happiness vs performance, it measures "how do you rate yourself" vs "the army's selection process for awarding medals".

The author explains that happiness is subjective:

> The behavioral science literature often refers to happiness as subjective well-being because the meaning of happiness varies in different contexts

...and then proceeds to delineate how psychology defines happiness:

1. a person’s own assessment of their satisfaction with life;

2. how much positive emotion [...] they experience;

3. and how little negative emotion [...] they experience

So yeah, self-rating is an important factor to measuring happiness.

[disgruntledphd2]

Haven't read the full paper, but they probably used this scale" https://ogg.osu.edu/media/documents/MB%20Stream/PANAS.pdf

It's relatively standard in the field.

[robertlagrant]

> So yeah, self-rating is an important factor to measuring happiness

Well, it's the only measure. I wasn't saying self-rating is bad (although it, of course, is if you're trying to draw objective conclusions), I'm trying to say that performance doesn't equate strongly enough to medals and happiness doesn't relate strongly enough to how people self-report to make any conclusions particularly useful.