Krys, Kuba, Haas, Brian W, Igou, Eric Raymond, Kosiarczyck, Aleksandra, Kocimska-Bortnowska, Agata, Kwiatkowska, Anna, Miu-Chi Lun, Vivian, Maricchiolo, Fridanna, Park, Joonha, Šolcová, Iva Poláčková, Sirlopu, David, Uchida, Yukiko, Vauclair, Christin-Melanie, Vignoles, Vivian and others, (2022) Introduction to a culturally sensitive measure of well-being: combining life satisfaction and interdependent happiness across 49 different cultures. Journal of Happiness Studies. pp. 1-21. ISSN 1389-4978

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of Psychology > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	Mx Elements Account
Depositing User:	Mx Elements Account
Date Deposited:	10 Nov 2022 17:08
Last Modified:	17 Jan 2023 10:15
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/108993

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