Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

A cognitive model of individual well-being

  • Published:
Social Choice and Welfare Aims and scope Submit manuscript

    We’re sorry, something doesn't seem to be working properly.

    Please try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, please contact support so we can address the problem.

Abstract.

This paper offers a model of individual well-being that takes into account cognitive factors. It postulates that individuals compare payoffs to aspiration levels. The latter are determined by past experiences (adaptation), by other people's performance (interpersonal comparison), as well as by reasoning (justifications and excuses). We axiomatize a measure of well-being defined on real-valued vectors of various lengths. It is a linear combination of differences between payoffs and aspiration levels, where the aspiration level at each instance is a linear function of past payoffs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Recanati School of Business, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel (e-mail: igilboa@post.tav.ac.il), , , , , , IL

    Itzhak Gilboa

  2. Department of Statistics and Recanati School of Business, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel, and Department of Economics, Ohio State University, Ohio, OH, USA (e-mail: schmeid@tav.ac.il), , , , , , IL

    David Schmeidler

Authors
  1. Itzhak Gilboa
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. David Schmeidler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

Received: 3 April 1998/Accepted: 23 March 1999

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Gilboa, I., Schmeidler, D. A cognitive model of individual well-being. Soc Choice Welfare 18, 269–288 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/s003550100103

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s003550100103

Keywords