This article investigates Schkade and Kahneman's (1998) maxim that ‘Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.’ This article shows that whilst becoming unemployed hurts psychologically, unemployment has a greater impact on happiness if the...

We test for calendar effects and the presence of others in reports of life satisfaction using Eurobarometer data from 31 countries over 20 years. We find significant day and month, but not time of day, effects. Life satisfaction is significantly reduced in the presence of others.