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
Beyond Money Toward an Economy of Well-Being
Ed Diener,Martin E. P. Seligman +1 more
TL;DR: It is argued that economic indicators were extremely important in the early stages of economic development, when the fulfillment of basic needs was the main issue and differences in well-being are less frequently due to income, and are more frequentlyDue to factors such as social relationships and enjoyment at work.
Journal ArticleDOI
Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?
TL;DR: The need for positive self-regard, as it is currently conceptualized, is not a universal, but rather is rooted in significant aspects of North American culture.
Journal ArticleDOI
What's Basic about Basic Emotions?.
Andrew Ortony,Terence J. Turner +1 more
TL;DR: The view that there exist basic emotions out of which all other emotions are built, and in terms of which they can be explained, is questioned, raising the possibility that this position is an article of faith rather than an empirically or theoretically defensible basis for the conduct of emotion research.
Book ChapterDOI
Cross-Cultural Correlates of Life Satisfaction and Self-Esteem
Ed Diener,Marissa L. Diener +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors assessed whether cross-cultural variations in the strength of associations were related to societal dimensions including income and individualism, and found that life satisfaction and self-esteem were clearly discriminable constructs.
Journal ArticleDOI
Factors Predicting the Subjective Well-Being of Nations
TL;DR: Subjective well-being in 55 nations, reported in probability surveys and a large college student sample, was correlated with social, economic, and cultural characteristics of the nations and only individualism persistently correlated with SWB when other predictors were controlled.