Happiness researchers Ed Diener and his son have long studied what factors influence life satisfaction and subjective well-being across individuals and groups. The team combined their research with the work of the Gallup World Poll and found that happiness across the world is not informed by the same factors.
Much of the Dieners earlier research focused on industrialized nations, yet their interest in cultural differences on the subject became part of a bigger project by the Gallup World Poll to study global happiness. Gallup measured well-being, economics, health and other factors, surveying more than 136,000 people across 132 countries from 2005 to 2006. “What we find is that countries vary enormously in happiness,” says Diener, a senior scientist at Gallup quoted in a September/October 2011 Scientific American Mind article.
Money Helps Happiness But Doesn’t Guarantee It
Forbes.com, using the Gallup findings, reports that the nations highest in happiness are for the most part, the wealthiest.
The five happiest countries in the world, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, are all within the same region and enjoy high levels of economic prosperity. Yet living in an economically prosperous nation doesn't guarantee citizens will be happier than individuals who reside in a less prosperous one.
“The Gallup study showed that while income undoubtedly influenced happiness, it did so for a particular kind of well-being--the kind one feels when reflecting on his or her own successes and prospects for the future,” writes Pileggi Pawelski. “Day-to-day happiness is more likely to be associated with how well one's psychological and social needs are being met, and that's harder to achieve with a paycheck.”
Financial stability and prosperity remain a predictable factor for at least some degree of life satisfaction but prosperity in turns out, can only buy so much joy. The Dieners found in some of their earlier research that while more money did increase happiness, it did so only up to a certain income level which at the time of that study was around $75,000, after that incremental income did not add up to equal parts added happiness.
In their work with the Maasai people in East Africa, the Dieners found the villagers were as content as people who lived in similar circumstances, and surprisingly, as happy as people who lived in developed societies. Diener and social psychologist Joar Vitterso also looked at the American Amish and the Inughuit people of Greenland and reported that all three societies rated above neutral across subjective well-being. Yet in income and food, areas that equate to material resources, the Massai ranked lower.
Strong Family and Friend Ties, Trust, Contribute to Psychological Health
Earlier Diener found evidence that materialism equated to lower levels of happiness. In 2010 he delivered a keynote presentation based on a study that measured happiness around the world and the degree an individual valued material wealth. South Korea, as an example, while ranking high in economic prosperity, ranked low on happiness. With a high rate of anger and depression, South Korea's suicide rate tops the 34 richest nations'.
Researchers believe a contributing factor is greater competition which breeds a more stressful environment. South Korea, for example, is being populated with large numbers of young people yet the nation lacks numerous or large enough universities to accommodate the need. These closed doors shut down the necessary pathway hopeful youth need to create fruitful employment.
Costa Ricans on the other hand, with just half the economic prosperity of South Korea, is a much happier nation, according to the research. Costa Rica and surrounding neighbors tend to have many of the ingredients that contribute to the recipe for happiness, social and psychological variables including strong family and friend ties, being generally trusting of strangers, mastering particular skills and feeling respected by others.
An individual's happiness also equates to achieving a sense of belonging, how well he or she matches the culture. Diener and his colleagues studied 7,000 people across 28 nations looking at how personality and culture affect well-being. Findings suggest that being extroverted, for example, improves well-being if people in the culture are also out-going. Similarly, introverts living in an “introverted” country are more likely to be happy, and individuals who consider themselves religious who live in a nation that heralds religion, are more likely to be happy, and so on.
Countries that place more value on social norms -- that is, how closely an individual’s behavior matches socially accepted actions -- have a greater impact a person's sense of well-being. Yet, in countries like the U.S. and Sweden, people base their happiness almost exclusively on their emotions.
Love of Country, Sense of Belonging
Citizens of poor, non-Western nations, such as Bangladesh and Ethiopia, place a higher value on national satisfaction than the more economically prosperous nations such as the U.S. and Denmark, countries that place higher importance on personal factors such as standard of living and health, reports Pawleski.
“The finding that those who felt good about their country also tended to report a higher quality of life was most dramatic in poor countries, where daily life is a challenge and people have trouble meeting basic needs,” writes Pawleski. “In these places, citizens’ well-being may depend more on external factors such as their perceptions of their social success and group membership.”
Research suggests that a sense of belonging can be a strong contributor to happiness, a factor inherent in social identity theory that says fitting into a group is a critical part of someone’s identity and influences his or her sense of self-worth.
Danish People Happiest Nation
Diener and his colleagues looked at the Gallup World Poll to uncover why the Danes consistently score higher than other nations on subjective well-being.
When comparing Danes to the richest nation in the world such as the USA, researchers found that although Danes are higher in life satisfaction, Americans are higher in positive and negative affect, in other words, they are more “emotional.” The Danes scored higher than Americans in enjoying life, and on Cantril’s Ladder of life evaluation.
The results suggest although rich Americans and Danes are equally happy, poor Danes are happier than their American counterparts, a finding that may account for the high overall scores for Denmark on subjective well-being.
Happiness Research Implications
Diener cautions people to define happiness strictly using the yardstick of success, something Americans tend to do. Success tends to only elevate well-being if it stems from activities that the individual and others respect rather than simply doing something better than someone else.
Diener and Biswas conjecture that the reason less prosperous citizens like the Maasai are generally happy despite their economic disadvantage is because the focus on what they have, rather than what they don’t. Not surprising, gratitude has long been shown to promote a sense of well-being.
Moreover, the Maasi have tremendous self-respect, have the skills they need to thrive, both essential components of psychological health. They also live a materially simple life, which might mean they compete less with each other.
No one is suggesting to dispel with the spirit of healthy and productive competition the US is so famous for or that reverting back to the primitive days of hunting and gathering will foster increased happiness, yet doing what we enjoy and what we’re good at, looking out for the collective good of others and bonding with family and friends might be closer to the formula for happiness than looking at the usual measures of success, suggests Diener.
Additional Reading
Money Affects Daily Happiness, Other Factors Impact Daily Joy
God and the Brain: Neurotheology Narrows Science and Religion Gap
Monitoring Your Family's Happiness Through a "Climate" Survey
The Secrets to Happiness Remain Timeless and Universal
Sources
- Biswas-Diener, R., Vitterso, J., & Diener, E. (2010). The Danish effect: Beginning to explore high well-being in Denmark. Social Indicators Research.
- Diener, Ed, Ng, Weiting, Harter, James, Arora, Raksha. (2010). ”Wealth and happiness across the world: Material prosperity predicts life evaluation, whereas psychosocial prosperity predicts positive feeling.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Levy, Francesco. (2010, July, 14). “The World's Happiest Countries.” Forbes.com. Retrieved September 6, 2011.
- Lloyd, Robin, “The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don’t Use Them,”LiveScience.com, February 2006.
- Pileggi Pawelski, Suzann. (2011, September/October).“The Many Faces of Happiness.” Scientific American Mind.
Laura Owens - Laura Owens has a B.S. in Psychology from Rollins College & U of FL. She is a freelance writer with expertise in motivation & wellness.
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