image: Map showing all the countries the survey participants are from. view more
Credit: Gwen Gardiner
A worldwide comparison of two tests that measure people's happiness highlights the importance of a country's cultural context and suggests that a test developed in Japan may currently be a better tool for cross-cultural research than a U.S.-developed test. Gwendolyn Gardiner of the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 9, 2020.
Most studies of happiness have used tests developed in Western countries, which typically prioritize individuals' independence. However, studies on happiness in Eastern countries emphasize connectedness with others, or interdependence. Non-Western tests of happiness have emerged in recent years, but it is unclear how the two concepts of happiness might generalize beyond the Eastern and Western countries typically examined in happiness research.
To explore the cross-cultural applicability of Eastern versus Western concepts of happiness, Gardiner and colleagues employed two happiness tests: one developed in Japan that emphasizes interdependence and a U.S.-developed test that emphasizes independence. As part of a larger, overarching research project, 15,358 college or university students from 63 countries across six continents volunteered to complete a survey that included both tests.
Analysis of the survey data and country-specific factors showed that the test emphasizing interdependence was more reliable in countries that are more culturally similar to Japan, such as other East Asian countries, while the independence-focused test was more reliable in countries more similar to the U.S., such as Western European countries.
The study also found that, while the interdependence-focused test had slightly lower overall reliability than the independence test, it was more consistently reliable across countries. Therefore, the interdependence-focused test may be a stronger research tool for cross-cultural comparison.
Both tests showed lower reliability in African and Middle Eastern countries, suggesting the need to develop tests of happiness that are more universal.
The authors add: "The way researchers currently assess happiness is typically using a Western-biased measure that assumes one's own happiness is largely independent of others, but we find that this viewpoint is by no means universal."
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Citation:
Gardiner G, Lee D, Baranski E, Funder D, Members of the International Situations Project (2020) Happiness around the world: A combined etic-emic approach across 63 countries. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0242718.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242718
Funding:
The research was supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant BCS-1528131 for the primary authors. Data gathering in the Czech Republic was supported by grant 17-14387S by the Czech Science Foundation and by institutional research funding RVO: 68081740 from the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences. Data gathering in Chile was partly supported by the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (FONDAP 15130009) and Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR) (FONDAP 15110006).
Competing Interests:
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242718
Journal
PLoS ONE