Evaluating others’ well-being: Survey experiment on fictional Japanese celebrities generated from wikipedia articles and ChatGPT

TL;DR

This study uses fictional Japanese celebrities to explore how people perceive a good, happy, and meaningful life, finding that success and fulfillment both matter.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel method using fictional celebrities and computational text analysis to evaluate well-being perceptions.

Findings

Career success and personal stability are key to happiness, while cultural contributions drive meaning.

Creative engagement and public influence enhance perceptions of a meaningful life.

Personal hardships negatively affect all dimensions of well-being, especially happiness.

Abstract

Well-being attracts scholars’ and policymakers’ interests for decades. This study examines how respondents evaluate a “Good Life,” “Happy Life,” and “Meaningful Life” through the analysis of fictional celebrity articles using the supervised Indian Buffet Process (sIBP). We identify key patterns in well-being perception, highlighting the importance of artistic engagement, public influence, and career success across all three dimensions. While happiness is closely linked to career achievements and personal stability, meaning is driven by cultural and artistic contributions, and a good life balances both elements. Personal hardships negatively impact all three dimensions but are particularly detrimental to happiness. Conversely, creative contributions and public engagement enhance perceptions of a meaningful life. These findings suggest that external success and intrinsic fulfillment are both essential for well-being. Our approach demonstrates the value of computational text analysis in uncovering nuanced insights into societal conceptions of a fulfilling life, paving the way for further interdisciplinary research on well-being and perception.

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