George Ward’s research while affiliated with University of Oxford and other places

This paper provides evidence from a natural experiment on the relationship between positive affect and productivity. We link highly detailed administrative data on the behaviors and performance of all telesales workers at a large telecommunications company with survey reports of employee happiness that we collected on a weekly basis. We use variation in worker mood arising from visual exposure to weather—the interaction between call center architecture and outdoor weather conditions—to provide a quasi-experimental test of the effect of happiness on productivity. We find evidence of a positive impact on sales performance, which is driven by changes in labor productivity—largely through workers converting more calls into sales and to a lesser extent by making more calls per hour and adhering more closely to their schedule. We find no evidence in our setting of effects on measures of high-frequency labor supply such as attendance and break-taking. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4766 .

A rapidly growing literature has attempted to explain Donald Trump's success in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as a result of a wide variety of differences in individual characteristics, attitudes, and social processes. We propose that the economic and psychological processes previously established have in common that they generated or electorally capitalized on unhappiness in the electorate, which emerges as a powerful high-level predictor of the 2016 electoral outcome. Drawing on a large dataset covering over 2 million individual surveys, which we aggregated to the county level, we find that low levels of evaluative, experienced, and eudaemonic subjective well-being (SWB) are strongly predictive of Trump's victory, accounting for an extensive list of demographic, ideological, and socioeconomic covariates and robustness checks. County-level future life evaluation alone correlates with the Trump vote share over Republican baselines at r = -.78 in the raw data, a magnitude rarely seen in the social sciences. We show similar findings when examining the association between individual-level life satisfaction and Trump voting. Low levels of SWB also predict anti-incumbent voting at the 2012 election, both at the county and individual level. The findings suggest that SWB is a powerful high-level marker of (dis)content and that SWB should be routinely considered alongside economic explanations of electoral choice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

We study what makes for a good job, by looking at which workplace characteristics are conducive or detrimental to job satisfaction. Using data from 37 countries around the world in the 2015 Work Orientations module of the International Social Survey Programme, we find that having an interesting job and good relationships at work, especially with management, are the strongest positive predictors of how satisfied employees are with their jobs, along with wages. Stressful or dangerous jobs, as well as those that interfere with family life, have the strongest negative correlation with job satisfaction. We discuss implications for firms and other organisations as well as for public policy-makers, and point toward future avenues for research in the area.

This chapter takes a look at how working parents can affect their children, and how. Evidence from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) shows that, other things held constant (including income), mother's work has no marked effect, good or bad, on the emotional health of her children. However, the chapter goes further by exploring the behavioral effects on the child if they have a minder or some form of nursery care. The child's intellectual development is also explored. In addition to these, the chapter takes a look at the effects of unemployed parents on their children. ALSPAC provides clear unemployment data only on the fathers of the children and shows that this can have a critical effect on children's development. There are many channels through which this can work—via the parents' mood, family conflict, reduced aspirations, taunting at school, and simple loss of income.

This chapter examines the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment most people gain from close personal relationships. Life-course data provide important evidence on this, although the chapter notes that for children, the question of close personal relationships is more nuanced. And as the chapter shows, human relationships at the most intimate level make a huge difference to a person's happiness. However, family history, in so far as it can be measured, contributes little toward explaining who becomes and remains partnered. This suggests that later interventions to help people's social skills may have as much a role to play as childhood interventions.

This chapter shows that, while happiness is not the same with income, income still affects happiness. Indeed, the effect of income on happiness is one of the best-measured effects in all happiness research. It presents the evidence to this effect. Again, the chapter begins with evidence from the British Cohort Study, mostly cross-sectional. It then goes on to time-series data on individuals drawn from three panel studies for Britain, Germany, and Australia, as well as cross-section data on the United States. The chapter also examines the key role of social comparisons and adaptation, before tracing how the income factor is determined by earlier childhood experiences.

This chapter examines the character of the parents and how they relate to their child. It considers the emotional health, behavior, and intellectual development of children and the impacts the parents' behavior and mental illness have on these factors. Though the chapter is not comprehensive, it does offer a few conclusions for policy considerations. It reveals that a mother's mental health is critical for the happiness and behavior of her children. It deserves high policy priority, for the sake of both mother and child. Furthermore, aggressive parents produce badly behaved children, while involved parents can help children significantly, especially with their academic development.