Introduction to a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Well-Being: Combining Life Satisfaction and Interdependent Happiness Across 49 Different Cultures

Kuba Krys*, Brian W. Haas, Eric Raymond Igou, Aleksandra Kosiarczyk, Agata Kocimska-Bortnowska, Anna Kwiatkowska, Vivian Miu Chi Lun, Fridanna Maricchiolo, Joonha Park, Iva Poláčková Šolcová, David Sirlopú, Yukiko Uchida, Christin Melanie Vauclair, Vivian L. Vignoles, John M. Zelenski, Mladen Adamovic, Charity S. Akotia, Isabelle Albert, Lily Appoh, D. M.Arévalo MiraArno Baltin, Patrick Denoux, Alejandra Domínguez-Espinosa, Carla Sofia Esteves, Vladimer Gamsakhurdia, Márta Fülöp, Ragna B. Garðarsdóttir, Alin Gavreliuc, Diana Boer, David O. Igbokwe, İdil Işık, Natalia Kascakova, Lucie Klůzová Kráčmarová, Natasza Kosakowska-Berezecka, Olga Kostoula, Nicole Kronberger, J. Hannah Lee, Xinhui Liu, Magdalena Łużniak-Piecha, Arina Malyonova, Pablo Eduardo Barrientos, Tamara Mohorić, Oriana Mosca, Elke Murdock, Nur Fariza Mustaffa, Martin Nader, Azar Nadi, Ayu Okvitawanli, Yvette van Osch, Vassilis Pavlopoulos, Zoran Pavlović, Muhammad Rizwan, Vladyslav Romashov, Espen Røysamb, Ruta Sargautyte, Beate Schwarz, Heyla A. Selim, Ursula Serdarevich, Maria Stogianni, Chien Ru Sun, Julien Teyssier, Wijnand A.P. van Tilburg, Claudio Torres, Cai Xing, Michael Harris Bond

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

How can one conclude that well-being is higher in country A than country B, when well-being is being measured according to the way people in country A think about well-being? We address this issue by proposing a new culturally sensitive method to comparing societal levels of well-being. We support our reasoning with data on life satisfaction and interdependent happiness focusing on individual and family, collected mostly from students, across forty-nine countries. We demonstrate that the relative idealization of the two types of well-being varies across cultural contexts and are associated with culturally different models of selfhood. Furthermore, we show that rankings of societal well-being based on life satisfaction tend to underestimate the contribution from interdependent happiness. We introduce a new culturally sensitive method for calculating societal well-being, and examine its construct validity by testing for associations with the experience of emotions and with individualism-collectivism. This new culturally sensitive approach represents a slight, yet important improvement in measuring well-being.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal Of Happiness Studies
DOIs
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2022

Keywords

  • Cultural sensitivity
  • Culture
  • Happiness
  • Interdependent happiness
  • Life satisfaction
  • Self-construals
  • Selfhoods
  • Well-being

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