Book ChapterDOI
Culture and subjective well-being
William Tov,Ed Diener +1 more
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In this article, the authors argue that some types of well-being are consistent across cultures, whereas there are also unique patterns of wellbeing in societies that are not comparable across cultures.Abstract:
Subjective well-being (SWB) is composed of people’s evaluations of their lives, including pleasant affect, infrequent unpleasant affect, life satisfaction (LS). We review the research literature concerning the influence of culture on SWB. We argue that some types of well-being, as well as their causes, are consistent across cultures, whereas there are also unique patterns of well-being in societies that are not comparable across cultures. Thus, well-being can be understood to some degree in universal terms, but must also be understood within the framework of each culture. We review the methodological challenges to assessing SWB in different cultures. One important question for future research is the degree to which feelings of well-being lead to the same outcomes in different cultures. The overarching theme of the paper is that there are pancultural experiences of SWB that can be compared across cultures, but that there are also culture-specific patterns that make cultures unique in their experience of well-being.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress
TL;DR: Wilson's (1967) review of the area of subjective well-being (SWB) advanced several conclusions regarding those who report high levels of "happiness" A number of his conclusions have been overturned: youth and modest aspirations no longer are seen as prerequisites of SWB as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?
TL;DR: The results reveal that happiness is associated with and precedes numerous successful outcomes, as well as behaviors paralleling success, and the evidence suggests that positive affect may be the cause of many of the desirable characteristics, resources, and successes correlated with happiness.
Posted Content
What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research
Bruno S. Frey,Alois Stutzer +1 more
TL;DR: The authors report how the economic variables income, unemployment and inflation affect happiness and how institutional factors, in particular the type of democracy and the extent of government decentralization, systematically influence how satisfied individuals are with their life.
Journal ArticleDOI
Personality, Culture, and Subjective Well-Being: Emotional and Cognitive Evaluations of Life
TL;DR: It is challenging to assess SWB across societies, the measures have some degree of cross-cultural validity and nations can be evaluated by their levels of SWB, there are still many open questions in this area.
Journal ArticleDOI
What can economists learn from happiness research
Bruno S. Frey,Alois Stutzer +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that reported subjective well-being is a satisfactory empirical approximation to individual utility and that happiness research is able to contribute important insights for economics, and report how the economic variables income, unemployment and inflation affect happiness as well as institutional factors, in particular the type of democracy and the extent of government decentralization, systematically influence how satisfied individuals are with their life.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Acquiescent Response Bias as an Aspect of Cultural Communication Style
TL;DR: This article found that acquiescence has substantive cultural meaning and should not be eliminated from nation-level analyses but rather built into analyses of cultural dynamics, and that high bias in responses to personally relevant items is found in nations high on family collectivism and on a preference for increased uncertainty avoidance.
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The Role of Culture and Gender in the Relationship between Positive and Negative Affect
TL;DR: For instance, this article found that positive and negative emotions are strongly correlated inversely for American women and weakly correlated negatively for American men, but strongly correlated positively for Chinese women.
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National differences in reported subjective well-being: Why do they occur?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the differences between nations in reported subjective well-being (SWB) by comparing students in S. Korea, Japan, and the People's Republic of China to students in the U.S.A. and found that the Pacific Rim subjects score lower on both happiness and life satisfaction in both absolute terms and when income is controlled.
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Life-satisfaction is a momentary judgment and a stable personality characteristic: the use of chronically accessible and stable sources
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed that people rely on the same sources to form repeated life-satisfaction judgments over time and that the influence of personality traits on life satisfaction is mediated by the use of chronically accessible sources because traits produce stability of these sources.