FAQ > About Subjective Well-Being (Happiness and Life Satisfaction), by Dr. Diener > Q: What error do reporters often make in inquiring about SWB?
A. Reporters sometimes think that the particular questions on their mind, rather than the one's scientists are studying or those that scientists know about, are the important ones. Thus, reporters sometimes ask research psychologists questions about SWB that are either uninteresting from a scientific point of view, or about which the scientist knows little.
Let me offer an analogy from chemistry. Imagine that you phone an expert chemist, who has just won the Nobel prize, and ask her if she could turn water into wine, or turn lead into gold. She would hang up on you. She has made an important discovery, and that is what she knows about and wants to discuss. If you phone an astronomer and ask about life on other planets, he or she can make some educated guesses, but ultimately does not have a strong answer to your question. However, the astronomer knows a great deal about many extraterrestrial things, if you are interested in those particular things and ask about them.
So a psychologist-researcher, for example one who is an expert on SWB, knows certain things, and knows a few things pretty well. And those are the things not only that he or she is competent to discuss, but are also the things about which s/he likes to talk. When the reporter brings up a bunch of questions that have just popped into their heads, the interview may seem naive or irrelevant to the researcher. The challenge for reporters is to draw out what is known scientifically, not to try to answer some questions about which science knows little.
Last updated on September 14, 2007 by Dr. Walt