Personal Life Satisfaction as a Measure of Societal Happiness is an Individualistic Presumption: Evidence from Fifty Countries

Abstract

Numerous studies document that societal happiness is correlated with individualism, but the nature of this phenomenon remains understudied. In the current paper, we address this gap and test the reasoning that individualism correlates with societal happiness because the most common measure of societal happiness (i.e., country-level aggregates of personal life satisfaction) is individualism-themed. With the data collected from 13,009 participants across fifty countries, we compare associations of four types of happiness (out of which three are more collectivism-themed than personal life satisfaction) with two different measures of individualism. We replicated previous findings by demonstrating that societal happiness measured as country-level aggregate of personal life satisfaction is correlated with individualism. Importantly though, we also found that the country-level aggregates of the collectivism-themed measures of happiness do not tend to be significantly correlated with individualism. Implications for happiness studies and for policy makers are signaled.

Not All Forms of Independence Are Created Equal: Only Being Independent the “Right Way” Is Associated With Self-Esteem and Life Satisfaction

“…However, our results are in line with those obtained by Krys et al (2020) , where the scores of the Romanian sample were exceeded only by four of the 50 cultures included in the study. One explanation for these striking results could be that in both our sample, and the sample included in the Krys et al (2020) study, were composed of university students, whereas the national samples include participants of all ages. Recent research by Lawrie et al (2020) showed a negative relationship between age and life satisfaction in Romania.…”

“…This was surprising given that Romania typically has some of the lowest subjective well-being scores on international surveys [e.g., Eurofound (2013) reported that Romania lies second from the bottom out of 27 EU countries on overall well-being]. However, our results are in line with those obtained by Krys et al (2020) , where the scores of the Romanian sample were exceeded only by four of the 50 cultures included in the study. One explanation for these striking results could be that in both our sample, and the sample included in the Krys et al (2020) study, were composed of university students, whereas the national samples include participants of all ages.…”

Satisfacción con la vida, autoestima y optimismo financiero en estudiantes interculturales de México

“…Por otro lado, la conducta humana también obedece a una parte social (APA, 2010). En este tenor, desde la perspectiva cultural, que posee un lugar central en esta investigación, se resalta que la cultura interviene en la comprensión de las variables independientes ya mencionadas (Krys et al, 2021;Salzman, 2018), y en cómo éstas son percibidas por personas que forman parte de diferentes grupos sociales, como es el caso del entorno intercultural. Asimismo, la cultura juega un papel relevante para la comprensión del optimismo financiero (White et al, 2021).…”

“…Dentro del entorno Latinoamericano, Núñez et al (2020) encontraron una asociación significativa y positiva en estudiantes de México y Bolivia; sin embargo, a pesar de este tipo de estudios, existe poca investigación enfocada hacía un contexto intercultural, específicamente orientado a estudiantes de pueblos originarios. Esto se hace más pertinente al considerar que la cultura tiene una relación importante respecto a la interpretación de la satisfacción con la vida (Krys et al, 2021) y la autoestima (Salzman, 2018).…”

Societal emotional environments and cross-cultural differences in life satisfaction: A forty-nine country study

“…The current study was part of a larger cross-cultural investigation, which was approved by research ethics committees, of the cultural antecedents of happiness, family well-being, and the valuation of different types of well-being (see also Krys et al, 2020). Measures of frequency of experience and frequency of expression of 30 different emotions were included to study a society's 'emotional environment' -we used these data to investigate our current research questions.…”