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A model of ambition, aspiration and happiness

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  • Chai, Junyi
Abstract
Can payoffs buy happiness? People's perception on their current payoffs depends on the social context and the historical context. This paper develops a utility model that captures both effects of interpersonal comparisons and self-adaptations in evaluating time streams of payoffs. Moment utility represents subjective happiness over payoffs, which hinges on three state variables: retaliation, aspiration, and ambition. Retaliation incorporates insights of fairness thinking and formulates people's psychological reaction on relative payoff comparisons interpersonally. Aspiration displays habit formation that formulates people's self-adaptation on their own history of payoffs. Ambition captures the net influence of the past situations to the present. Over a time window, our model delivers a new measure of individual well-being under both social and historical contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Chai, Junyi, 2021. "A model of ambition, aspiration and happiness," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 288(2), pages 692-702.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:288:y:2021:i:2:p:692-702
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2020.06.009
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    Cited by:

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    2. Junyi Chai, 2023. "A Behavioral Foundation of Satiation and Habituation," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-18, January.
    3. Junyi Chai, 2021. "Measuring happiness under interpersonal comparison: An advanced theoretical framework and implications," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(12), pages 1-19, December.
    4. Lane, David C. & Rouwette, Etiënne A.J.A., 2023. "Towards a behavioural system dynamics: Exploring its scope and delineating its promise," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 777-794.
    5. Haijiao Cui & Bin Cao & Aimei Li & Zhaohui Li, 2023. "A General Model of Subjective Value and Stimulus-Intensity-Sensitive Hedonic Editing Strategy," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 1191-1217, March.

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