Feelings 'ratings' are highly predictive of future behaviour - research

Every day, we are asked to rate our feelings on a scale of one to 10: how happy are we with a new lawn mower, how helpful was the bank clerk, how easy was it to fill in the tax return. Such scales are criticised by economists and governments as meaningless. But, new research from Oxford shows a person’s own rating of their feelings – even on such seemingly arbitrary scales – is of greater predictive power, in terms of action, than a collection of socioeconomic measures.