Predictors of Subjective Well-Being Across Cultures
Predictors of Subjective Well-Being Across Cultures
Predictors of Subjective Well-Being Across Cultures
Citation:
Suh, E. M., & Choi, S. (2018). Predictors of subjective well-being across cultures. In E. Diener, S. Oishi,
& L. Tay (Eds.), Handbook of well-being. Salt Lake City, UT: DEF Publishers. DOI:nobascholar.com
Abstract:
We provide an overview of well-documented factors that predict and explain national and cultural
differences in happiness. A brief history of the culture and happiness research is offered, followed by a
literature summary on how cultural variations in happiness is related with objective life conditions, lay
cultural beliefs of happiness, emotion patterns, characteristics of the self, and excessive concerns of social
evaluation in East Asian cultures. We also briefly comment on findings from the culture-person fit
research, and introduce recent biological and ecological papers that may point to new research directions
for the culture and happiness field.
Keywords: subjective well-being, culture, self, emotion
Culture, as famously remarked by Durkheim (1895), is in many ways like “air.” It permeates our
mind and has a profound influence on our beliefs, feelings, values, and concerns about tomorrow. Yet, like
air, culture rarely enters into our consciousness. It shapes our mind so thoroughly and naturally that being
aware of its omnipresent influence on our mind is usually difficult.
This “invisible” culture started to draw the attention of subjective well-being (SWB) researchers in
the early 1990s, the period that roughly overlapped with the publication of landmark papers on culture and
self (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1989). Important empirical foundations were laid, raising
excitement and justifications for the study of culture and happiness. For instance, significant mean
differences in happiness found between nations could not be attributed to simple methodological artifacts
(Diener, Suh, Smith, & Shao, 1995), and longstanding determinants of happiness found in Western
samples, such as self-esteem, were surprisingly weak predictors in non-Western samples (Diener & Diener,
1995). An edited volume (Diener & Suh, 2000), an Annual Review of Psychology article (Diener, Oishi, &
Lucas, 2003), and a special issue of the Journal of Happiness Studies (Suh & Oishi, 2004) were devoted
exclusively to the topic of culture and SWB. These works, in a sense, sprayed color to the once invisible
culture, carving an exciting new niche in happiness research.
Now, most researchers find it quite obvious that culture plays a critical role in shaping virtually
every aspect of happiness—how happiness itself is conceptualized, which life experiences are prioritized,
how they are combined into an overall happiness judgment, preferred type of happiness state (low versus
high arousal), to name a few. In addition to the development of more sophisticated research questions,
lately, an unprecedented amount of large international datasets released by research organizations (e.g.,
Gallup, World Values Survey) have become available for happiness researchers. Thanks to these changes,
cultural and national difference has now become a vibrant research field in happiness.
Given the huge volume of accumulated studies, our review of this topic is inevitably selective.
While trying to maintain a balance between classic and recent research, this chapter focuses more on well-
replicated cultural predictors of SWB that have been particularly informative for happiness researchers. We
also suggest possible future directions for the culture and SWB research to expand, including more
systematic consideration of ecological and biological factors.
Objective Conditions
1
One ongoing debate on cultural/national differences in happiness is whether growth in national
wealth leads to increase in happiness. The spark of this debate dates back to Easterlin (1974), who
proposed that while wealthier nations are generally happier than poorer nations, national income does not
directly translate into more happiness after a certain point (see Easterlin, McVey, Switek, Sawangfa, &
Zweig, 2010, for a review). In contrast, some researchers have shown opposing evidence that economic
growth and happiness do go together. For instance, Deaton (2008) found from the Gallup World Poll that
highest levels of well-being are found in Western European countries (especially Scandinavia), North
America, Australia, and New Zealand, countries characterized as having many desirable objective
conditions, such as wealth, good education, and political stability (e.g., for national differences, see Diener,
Kahneman, & Helliwell, 2010; Diener & Suh, 1999; Hagerty & Veenhoven, 2003; Helliwell, Layard, &
Sachs, 2016).
In response to this debate, recent studies that analyzed the Gallup World Poll data have suggested
that economic conditions are correlated discriminately with SWB measures. That is, some type of objective
measures correlate with some types of SWB but not with others. Across 132 countries, economic
conditions (such as national income and public resources) were positively associated with the cognitive
evaluation of one’s life, but only weakly associated with emotional well-being (Diener, Ng, Harter, &
Arora, 2010). In other words, people living in wealthier nations “think” they are happy, but not necessarily
“feel” more positive emotions than those in poorer nations. A follow-up study even found that for the same
level of personal income, people living in richer countries felt angry and worried more frequently (Tay,
Morrison, & Diener, 2014). Overall, emotional well-being was largely predicted by personal factors rather
than societal conditions. Positive feelings were dependent on psychosocial factors, such as social support,
respect, and autonomy. Negative feelings were explained by both societal and personal factors (Diener et
al., 2010; Ng & Diener, 2014; Tay & Diener, 2011).
Some researchers argue that both the volume of national wealth and the psychological factors that
accompany it matters (see Diener, Oishi, & Lucas, 2015; Diener, Tay, & Oishi, 2013; Oishi & Schimmack,
2010). For instance, Oishi & Kesebir (2015) found that economic growth prompts increase in happiness
when income is evenly distributed, but not when income inequality is high. They speculate that heightened
sense of unfairness and social comparison may be the reason behind this phenomenon (see also Eksi &
Kaya, 2017; Schröder, 2017). It is also found that progressive taxation is positively associated with SWB of
nations (Oishi, Schimmack, & Diener, 2012).
However, it should be also noted that economic indices might shadow the effects of various positive
social qualities on happiness that correlate with national wealth. It has been found in some dataset that
national affluence raises happiness only through its effect on freedom, individualism, or democracy (Dorn,
Fischer, Kirchgässner, & Sousa-Poza, 2007; Fischer & Boer, 2011; Inglehart, Foa, Peterson, & Welzel,
2008), prompting the need to “unpackage” wealth and find what precise elements of economic affluence
contribute to the SWB of nations.
2
To overcome this limit, in one recent study (Shin, Suh, Eom, & Kim, 2017), Korean and American
participants are asked to write three words that immediately come to their minds when they think of
“happiness.” Regardless of cultural background, individuals who mentioned more words related with social
relationships or relational concepts (friendship, love) were happier than others. However, interesting
cultural differences were also found at a more detailed level. For instance, the most commonly associated
word with happiness in Korea was “family” (13% of all responses), whereas affective states or expressions,
such as “smile,” and “laugh” topped the list (11% of responses) in the US. The most central type of
relationship linked with happiness also differed. Whereas ascribed, in-group relationships (family) were
nominated prominently in Korea, American respondents more often linked self-chosen social connections
(romantic partner, friend) with happiness. Although social experiences are believed to be commonly
important in both cultures, the type of relationships through which this need is fulfilled seems to show
cultural variation.
Besides different beliefs on the content of happiness, cultures also vary in how desirable they think
happiness is. In the US, for instance, people generally hold a glowing view of a “happy” person. A happy
person, compared to a less happy person, is viewed not only to be more desirable, but even more likely to
go to heaven by Americans (King & Napa, 1998). However, not all cultures are as enthusiastic about
happiness. In some cultures, people are ambivalent about being overly happy, because happiness is
believed to be followed by unhappiness at the end (Ji, Nisbett, & Su, 2001).
Also, the common Western belief that happiness is an inalienable right and a product of an
individual’s action appears less strongly among those brought up in East Asian or Islamic cultures (Lu &
Gilmour, 2006; Joshanloo, 2013). Reflective of this contrasting cultural attitude, it has been suggested that
Western cultural members might implicitly feel a certain degree of “pressure to be happy” (Suh, 2000),
whereas some degree of “aversion to happiness” may exist in non-Western cultures (Joshanloo & Weijers,
2014).
Cross-cultural stereotypes about a “happy” person align with this difference. Choi, Suh, & Shin
(2017) asked respondents from 45 nations to imagine overhearing a person who claims to be extremely
happy and satisfied with life. Then, they were asked to guess how well various positive (e.g., warm, moral)
and negative (e.g., arrogant, selfish) personality traits might characterize this self-proclaimed happy person.
As expected, culturally held stereotypes about a happy person’s character differed considerably across
cultures. Although this stereotype was highly positive in cultures that report high levels of happiness (e.g.,
US, South America), in certain regions, people were underwhelmed about the happy person. For instance,
in Japan, a nation that reports low happiness in comparison to its economic level, people believed that the
imaginary happy person is more likely to possess negative (e.g., selfish, shallow) than positive personality
traits. Across countries, how positively people thought about a happy person (indexed by subtracting the
estimated likelihood of possessing negative from positive traits) significantly predicted the actual happiness
level of each nation. This correlation remained even after controlling for relevant factors, such as emotion
norms, resentment towards expressing happiness, individualism, and gross domestic product (GDP).
Most recently, an interesting argument has been proposed as to why cultures vary in their
desirability judgments about happiness. Koh and her colleagues (2017) claim that one factor that sets apart
cultures that strongly value happiness from those that value it less is the level of pathogen threat
historically present in the environment. The high social nature of a happy person, although it has various
positive assets in low pathogen regions, may inadvertently increase the chance of bringing infectious
diseases through active social interactions. In high pathogen regions, people might have been reinforced to
de-value traits or emotions (happiness) associated with exploration and contact of strangers. This
hypothesis was not only supported in laboratory experiments, but interestingly, even predicted the voting
pattern of nations in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly meeting regarding an international
happiness resolution (adopting happiness as a national guide for policy). As predicted, UN member states
that sponsored this resolution had a significantly lower level of pathogen than non-sponsoring states.
Studying lay beliefs of happiness across cultures goes beyond gratifying academic curiosity. Certain
beliefs held by the person about happiness, and how much she values it actually make a difference in how
happy she is. For instance, people’s belief on whether the total amount of happiness they will experience in
life is predetermined and “fixed” or “infinite” leads to divergent habits and choices related with happiness.
Importantly, the fixed-amount theorists were significantly less happy with their lives (Koo & Suh, 2006),
controlling for personality factors. There is also the finding that in countries where positive emotions are
highly valued, people report higher life satisfaction and experience more positive emotions (Bastian,
Kuppens, De Roover, & Diener, 2014).
Emotion
3
A defining aspect of emotional well-being is the relative frequency of positive over negative affect
(Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999), which has led to a heavy focus on the affective dimension of valence
(positive or negative) in happiness research. Thanks to cross-cultural research, psychologists now recognize
that there are other dimensions of positive affect that are relevant for understanding happiness (Tsai, 2007).
For instance, Euro-Canadians highly value high activation positive affect (HAP), such as excitement and
elation, whereas Chinese and Japanese value low activation positive affect (LAP), such as calmness and
serenity (Ruby, Falk, Heine, Villa, & Silberstein, 2012).
This cultural variation in ideal positive affect causes a difference in the link between positive
emotion and happiness. Researchers found that the discrepancies between ideal and actual HAP led to poor
mental health for European Americans and Asian Americans, but not for Hong Kong Chinese (Tsai,
Knutson, & Fung, 2006). By contrast, discrepancies between ideal and actual LAP led to poor mental
health for Asian Americans and Hong Kong Chinese, but not European Americans.
In addition to valence and arousal, Kitayama and colleagues (e.g., Kitayama & Markus, 2000;
Kitayama & Park, 2007) suggest that the happiness of Japanese and Americans also relate differently with
another pole of positive emotion—Japanese centered more on socially engaged (feelings of closeness to
others, friendly feelings) emotions, whereas Americans rely more on socially disengaged (pride and
feelings of superiority) emotions. Related to this difference, it is reasoned that the pursuit of happiness
itself may lead to different outcomes between cultures. According to Ford et al. (2015), motivation to
pursue happiness predicted lower well-being in the US, whereas it predicted higher well-being in Russia
and East Asia. The authors attribute this difference to the possibility that collectivistic cultural members
tend to pursue happiness in more socially engaging ways than individualistic cultural members.
Cultures also differ in their beliefs about the relation between positive and negative affect. In
general, East Asians have a more dialectic view than Western cultural members; therefore, they are more
likely to believe that events or experiences that seemingly contradict can co-occur (Peng & Nisbett, 1999).
As a result, European Americans tend to have fewer mixed emotional experiences (feeling bad and good at
the same time) than East Asians (e.g., Miyamoto, Uchida, & Ellsworth, 2010; Shiota, Campos, Gonzaga,
Keltner, & Peng, 2010), a pattern mediated by dialectical beliefs (Spencer-Rodgers, Peng, & Wang, 2010).
Some have employed this dialectic script to explain cultural differences in emotion regulation, such as the
dampening or savoring of positive emotions (Miyamoto & Ma, 2011) or why people try to maximize
positive emotion and minimize negative emotion more strongly in one culture than another (Sims et al.,
2015).
Another widely replicated finding concerns cultural difference in the use of affect in overall
judgments of happiness (Kuppens, Realo, & Diener, 2008; Schimmack, Radhakrishnan, Oishi, Dzokoto, &
Ahadi, 2002; Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis, 1998). The “affect-as-information” theory (Schwarz & Clore,
1983) has suggested that people use their momentary mood as a heuristic cue for making various
evaluative judgements, including life satisfaction. Research has found that this phenomenon occurs more
reliably among individuals who chronically view themselves as an independent being than those who
construe themselves as an interdependent person.
This pattern is found between cultures as well as within a culture as function of one’s self-view. For
instance, when Americans are primed of the relational aspects of self, they tend to base their life
satisfaction judgment quite heavily on others’ evaluations of their lives (the typical collectivistic pattern);
conversely, Koreans primed on their unique aspects of the self shifted their attention to inner emotions
(individualistic pattern) during life satisfaction judgment (Suh, Diener, & Updegraff, 2008). Thus, the type
of information used in constructing global self-judgments of happiness seem to systematically differ
between cultures, depending on whether the autonomous, unique aspects of the self versus the
fundamentally socially embedded nature of the self are stressed. This difference is also observed with
implicit measures. In an association-judgment task, European Americans who were satisfied with their lives
associated happiness with more positive emotion words, but this pattern was not found for Koreans and
Asian Americans (Koo & Oishi, 2009).
Emotion norms that have implications for both the experience and expression of happiness also vary
between cultures. In general, in non-Western cultures, positive emotions (happiness) are valued less,
whereas negative emotions are believed to have important functional values, compared to highly
individualistic cultures, (e.g., Eid & Diener, 2001; Joshanloo et al., 2014; Oishi et al., 2013). Although
national differences in SWB are not completely explained by difference in emotion norms, researchers
need to be aware of their influence. For instance, according to a recent finding by Sheldon et al. (2017),
Russians (compared to Americans) reported a greater inhibition in the expression of happiness to strangers.
Interestingly, the greater happiness inhibition to strangers was unrelated with the experienced happiness of
Russians, but negatively predicted the happiness level of American samples (see also, Soto, Perez, Kim,
4
Lee, & Minnick, 2011). In this study, the self-reported SWB level between the two cultural groups did not
differ, suggesting that the size of the discrepancy between experience and overt expressions of happiness
may differ across countries.
5
This explains why money is strongly believed to be critical for happiness, even in highly affluent East
Asian societies. In one study, Singaporeans, but not Americans, expected that a person with a higher
income would be more likely to have a high-quality life than a person with lower income (Wirtz & Scollon,
2012). Compared to the US, extrinsic goods (e.g., money, physical appearance) are stressed more by
Koreans, a pattern that partly explains the happiness difference between the two countries (Koo & Suh,
2015). In a similar line, objective social status (education) is more strongly associated with happiness
among Japanese than Americans, whereas subjective social status is more strongly associated with
happiness among Americans than Japan (Curhan et al., 2014). The authors’ interpretation is that the
Japanese trust objective markers that others can see more, while Americans trusted their own judgments.
Using a more common psychological term, the contingency of self-worth (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001)
seems to differ between cultures. It is found that between Eastern and Western cultures, other’s approval
contingency of self-worth (CSW) is notably different, which mediates the happiness difference between
Taiwan and US samples (Liu, Chiu, & Chang, 2017). It suggests the possibility that East Asian’s self-
judgments of happiness could be more prone to fluctuations, depending on the tone of social feedback. This
appears to be the case. In one study, Korean and American college students were asked to describe a recent
pleasant event and rate how happy they felt during the experience (Choi, 2013). Several weeks later, the
participants rated once again how happy they felt about the same event they wrote earlier, after receiving
bogus feedback that other people either agreed (also thought the event was fun) or disagreed (thought the
event was rather boring) with them. Interestingly, the Koreans’ evaluations of the self-nominated happy
event changed as a function of others’ approval or disapproval, whereas Americans did not. It implies that
even the hedonic evaluation of a highly personal experience is affected by other’s evaluation in
collectivistic Asian cultures.
A flipside of this heightened social sensitivity is that East Asians are much more concerned about
potential damages to their social image than Western cultural members. As such, some active and
promotive social gestures that benefit happiness are less pursued, in fear that they may instigate negative
reactions. A good example is, contrary to what might be expected from cultural stereotypes, East Asians are
in general less likely to seek social support from others than European Americans (Kim, Sherman, &
Taylor, 2008). This is because Asians are more concerned about the negative relational consequences of
help seeking, such as stressing the support provider or being viewed as an incompetent person. One recent
cross-cultural paper finds a highly similar pattern occurring in the link between capitalization and
happiness (Choi, Oishi, Shin, & Suh, in press). Koreans, compared to Americans, were more hesitant to
celebrate positive events (capitalization attempts) with others because of possible relational costs (e.g.,
being seen as immature, inappropriate).
The East Asians’ excessive concern of other’s view might be a key psychological reason for why
their happiness level is lower than expected by economic indices (Suh, 2007; Suh & Koo, 2008). It may be
the common underlying cause of several interrelated phenomena that are known to be detrimental for
happiness: a) being more focused on external, materialistic aspects of happiness, b) not being able to create
and use idiosyncratic standards for self-judgment, which is an essential strategy for maintaining self-
enhancing views (cf. Dunning & McElwee, 1995), c) being oriented more towards preventive than
promotive decisions in everyday life.
6
Despite the popularity of the culture-person fit idea, strong versions of this argument may lead to
cultural relativism, possibly undermining the pan-cultural, universal elements of human happiness. Few
would recommend a person who lives in a highly totalitarian society, for the sake of culture-person fit, to
give up personal autonomy as a strategy for increasing happiness. In fact, there are findings that challenge
the fit notion. According to the fit theory, the happier Koreans should be the ones whose personal values
align with strong collectivistic ideals. This was not the case (Kim, 2012). Even in Korea, individuals who
valued autonomy and enjoyed typical individualistic experiences (e.g., feeling unique) were happier than
the more culturally fitting counterparts, especially among the affluent group.
Conclusion
Although cultural variations clearly exist, we would like to simultaneously stress that there are
undeniably universal aspects of well-being. So far, research has not yet found any single country in which
happiness correlates in a reverse direction with well-known predictors of happiness—income, extraversion,
positive affect, etc. Even in collectivist cultures where inner emotions seem to play a less defining role in
happiness, for instance, the correlational direction is similar to other countries. Hence, appreciating the
cultural variance in happiness is important, but not to the extent of obscuring the universal aspects of
human well-being.
One of the most pressing research needs is gaining a more in-depth understanding of how and why
7
the culture-specific beliefs and practices of happiness arise. This would require researchers to go beyond
cataloguing surface differences between regions, and make creative, theory-driven speculations on what
underlying adaptive functions the different cultural contours of happiness might serve. Culture is created
by humans, who are not exceptions to the basic evolutionary principles (Hill & Buss, 2008). Basic
evolutionary needs, such as safety or social belongingness, are pursued in a widely different manner by
two individuals who differ in personality, values, and habits. Likewise, the different cultural shades of
happiness, influenced by ecological constraints and historical factors, might merely be different scenes seen
from multiple paths. They are all likely headed toward a common destination—securing essential needs for
survival and reproduction (social respect, belongingness, resource).
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