Pretty much the whole causal estimate comes down to the influence of happiness 6 months after quitting a job or breaking up. Almost everything else is swamped with noise. The only individual question with a consistent causal effect larger than the standard error was “should I break my bad habit?”, and doing so made people unhappier. Even for those factors, there’s a lot of biases in this self-report data, which the authors noted and tried to address. I’m just not sure what we can really learn from this, even though it is a fun study.
Pretty much the whole causal estimate comes down to the influence of happiness 6 months after quitting a job or breaking up. Almost everything else is swamped with noise. The only individual question with a consistent causal effect larger than the standard error was “should I break my bad habit?”, and doing so made people unhappier. Even for those factors, there’s a lot of biases in this self-report data, which the authors noted and tried to address. I’m just not sure what we can really learn from this, even though it is a fun study.