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

Krys, K;Haas, BW;Igou, ER;Kosiarczyk, A;Kocimska-Bortnowska, A;Kwiatkowska, A;Lun, VMC;Maricchiolo, F;Park, J;Solcova, IP;Sirlopu, D;Uchida, Y;Vauclair, CM;Vignoles, VL;Zelenski, JM;Adamovic, M;Akotia, CS;Albert, I;Appoh, L;Mira, DMA;Baltin, A;Denoux, P;Dominguez-Espinosa, A;Esteves, CS;Gamsakhurdia, V;Fulop, M;Gardarsdottir, RB;Gavreliuc, A;Boer, D;Igbokwe, DO;Isik, I;Kascakova, N;Kracmarova, LK;Kosakowska-Berezecka, N;Kostoula, O;Kronberger, N;Lee, JH;Liu, XH;Luzniak-Piecha, M;Malyonova, A;Barrientos, PE;Mohoric, T;Mosca, O;Murdock, E;Mustaffa, NF;Nader, M;Nadi, A;Okvitawanli, A;van Osch, Y;Pavlopoulos, V;Pavlovic, Z;Rizwan, M;Romashov, V;Roysamb, E;Sargautyte, R;Schwarz, B;Selim, HA;Serdarevich, U;Stogianni, M;Sun, CR;Teyssier, J;van Tilburg, WAP;Torres, C;Xing, C;Bond, MH

2023-01-01

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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.