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
Citations
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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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Book
Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress
TL;DR: A cultural typology of economic development is given in this paper, along with a discussion of the role of culture and gender in economic development in the development of the United States and Africa.
Journal ArticleDOI
The shifting basis of life satisfaction judgments across cultures: Emotions versus norms.
TL;DR: The relative importance of emotions versus normative beliefs for life satisfaction judgments was compared among individualist and collectivist nations in two large sets of international data (in total, 61 nations, N = 62,446) as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Most People Are Happy
Ed Diener,Carol Diener +1 more
TL;DR: In fact, most people report a positive level of subjective well-being (SWB), and say that they are satisfied with domains such as marriage, work, and leisure as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race in American Psychology
TL;DR: The study of culture and related concepts, such as ethnicity and race, in American psychology are examined in this paper, where the conceptual confusion and ways in which culture, ethnicity, and race are used as explanatory factors for intergroup differences in psychological phenomena are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Differentiating autonomy from individualism and independence: A self-determination theory perspective on internalization of cultural orientations and well-being.
TL;DR: Results supported the hypothesized relations between autonomy and well-being across cultures and gender and suggested greater internalization of horizontal relative to vertical practices.