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Cited by 866

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 17 of the 17 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction

Schkade, David A., Kahneman, Daniel·1998·Psychological Science

Abstract

Large samples of students in the Midwest and in Southern California rated satisfaction with life overall as well as with various aspects of life, for either themselves or someone similar to themselves in one of the two regions. Self-reported overall life satisfaction was the same in both regions, but participants who rated a similar other expected Californians to be more satisfied than Midwesterners. Climate-related aspects were rated as more important for someone living in another region than for someone in one's own region. Mediation analyses showed that satisfaction with climate and with cultural opportunities accounted for the higher overall life satisfaction predicted for Californians. Judgments of life satisfaction in a different location are susceptible to a focusing illusion: Easily observed and distinctive differences between locations are given more weight in such judgments than they will have in reality.

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Metadata

Authors
Schkade, D. A., & Kahneman, D.
Venue
Psychological Science
Published
1998-09
Volume
9
Issue
5
Pages
340-346
ISSN
  • 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
  • 1467-9280
OpenAlex
W2128186963
Cited by
866
References
17
FWCI
15.11
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/1467-9280.00066
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Schkade, D. A., & Kahneman, D. (1998). Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction. Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00066

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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