Beyond Satisfaction: Learning Associations Between Content, Reviews, and Well-Being
For recommendation system designers, this work highlights the inadequacy of satisfaction proxies for user well-being, motivating richer outcome targets.
This paper investigates whether commonly used satisfaction signals (ratings, sentiment) capture well-being in book consumption, finding only loose correlations with most well-being facets and stronger alignment with hedonic than eudaimonic well-being. Specific content themes (e.g., religion, human drives) show modest correlations with well-being dimensions (r up to 0.35), while incivility and past-focused language correlate negatively (r around -0.15 and -0.12).
Digital platforms commonly optimize for satisfaction using signals such as ratings, likes, and sentiment, implicitly treating satisfaction as a proxy for user well-being. Psychological theory, however, characterizes well-being as a multidimensional construct that extends beyond satisfaction or short-term positivity. In this paper, we examine whether commonly used satisfaction signals capture expressions of well-being, and what types of content are associated with different well-being outcomes. Our study focuses on book consumption, a convenient domain wherein users engage substantially with fixed pieces of content and sometimes provide nuanced long-form feedback. Our results show that (a) rating scales and sentiment only loosely correlate with most facets of psychological well-being and (b) ratings and sentiment are more closely aligned with immediate and hedonic as opposed to enduring and eudaimonic expressions of well-being. Further, by linking reviews to book content, we find that themes related to values, and institutions like religion (Pearson r = 0.35) or human drives (r=.26) are associated with higher meaning and accomplishment respectively, while incivility (avg r = -.15) and past-focused language (avg r = -.12) are associated with lower well-being. These findings motivate richer outcome targets for content recommendation systems beyond satisfaction alone.