You know when you're happy and you know when you aren't, but what really is happiness, and what exactly takes us to that joyous state? Psychologists from twelve different countries teamed up to discern a global perspective.
Their findings were just published to the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
The researchers comprehensively surveyed and queried 2,799 adults living in urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, and the United States about their definitions of happiness.
Between 200 and 220 adults aged thirty to sixty participated from each country, split evenly between men and women. Eight out of ten of the participants had children. Slightly over half were Christian, 12.4% were Hindu, and 27.6% didn't belong to a religion.
From the 7,551 definitions of happiness provided by the participants, the researchers distilled a number of findings.
Overall, and in eleven of the twelve countries surveyed, subjects said that family and strong relationships contributed to happiness the most, followed by good health. People most often described family as a source of solidarity, cohesion, and mutual support, and reported contentment from watching their children grow into strong, positive individuals. Strong relationships were valued as a way of sharing life experiences, as well as giving and receiving support.
Worldwide, participants most often gave a psychological definition of happiness. Of these definitions, the notion of harmony dominated, including the components of inner peace, inner balance, contentment, and psychophysical well-being. This surprised the researchers somewhat, as the almost Zen-like idea of harmony is often neglected in psychological research on happiness, especially in the Western world. Harmony was regularly characterized by participants as achieving emotional stability, "being attuned with the universe," and attaining a balance between what is desired and what is achieved.
There were a number of interesting cultural differences that arose in participants' definitions. Subjects from the US described happiness as a state of "no negative feelings" and associated it with "optimism" more than residents of any other country, whereas residents of Norway particularly cared about "autonomy" and attaining "mastery" in certain skills or other aspects of life. In Croatia, the poorest country on the list, participants focused less on psychological definitions of happiness and more on simply being healthy and satisfied in day-to-day life.
The study had a number of limitations. Participants were from urban areas, so perspectives from those living in rural areas are absent. Moreover, cultures from Asia, Africa, and Latin America were undersampled, and there were almost no viewpoints from Muslims.
The researchers hope their study will lead to more happiness across the globe.
"As most people now live in multi-cultural societies, a deeper understanding of cultural notions of happiness and well-being will be valuable to promote harmonious existence and well-being for all diverse groups within the same country."
Source: Delle Fave A, Brdar I, Wissing MP, Araujo U, Castro Solano A, Freire T, Hernández-Pozo M, Jose P, Martos T, Nafstad HE, Nakamura J, Singh K and Soosai-Nathan L (2016). Lay definitions of happiness across nations: The primacy of inner harmony and relational connectedness. Front. Psychol. 7:30. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00030
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