Kuba Krys, Olga Kostoula, Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg, Oriana Mosca, J. Hannah Lee, Fridanna Maricchiolo, Aleksandra Kosiarczyk, Agata Kocimska-Bortnowska, Claudio Torres, Hidefumi Hitokoto, Kongmeng Liew, Michael H. Bond, Vivian Miu-Chi Lun, Vivian L. Vignoles, John M. Zelenski, Brian W. Haas, Joonha Park, Christin-Melanie Vauclair, Anna Kwiatkowska, Marta Roczniewska, Nina Witoszek, İdil Işık, Natasza Kosakowska-Berezecka, Alejandra Domínguez-Espinosa, June Chun Yeung, Maciej Górski, Mladen Adamovic, Isabelle Albert, Vassilis Pavlopoulos, Márta Fülöp, David Sirlopu, Ayu Okvitawanli, Diana Boer, Julien Teyssier, Arina Malyonova, Alin Gavreliuc, Ursula Serdarevich, Charity S. Akotia, Lily Appoh, D. M. Arévalo Mira, Arno Baltin, Patrick Denoux, Carla Sofia Esteves, Vladimer Gamsakhurdia, Ragna B. Garðarsdóttir, David O. Igbokwe, Eric R. Igou, Natalia Kascakova, Lucie Klůzová Kračmárová, Nicole Kronberger, Pablo Eduardo Barrientos, Tamara Mohorić, Elke Murdock, Nur Fariza Mustaffa, Martin Nader, Azar Nadi, Yvette van Osch, Zoran Pavlović, Iva Poláčková Šolcová, Muhammad Rizwan, Vladyslav Romashov, Espen Røysamb, Ruta Sargautyte, Beate Schwarz, Lenka Selecká, Heyla A. Selim, Maria Stogianni, Chien-Ru Sun, Agnieszka Wojtczuk-Turek, Cai Xing, Yukiko Uchida
Psychological science tends to treat subjective well-being and happiness synonymously. We start from the assumption that subjective well-being is more than being happy to ask the fundamental question: What is the ideal level of happiness? From a cross-cultural perspective, we propose that the idealization of attaining maximum levels of happiness may be especially characteristic of Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies but less so for others. Searching for an explanation for why “happiness maximization” might have emerged in these societies, we turn to studies linking cultures to their eco-environmental habitat. We discuss the premise that WEIRD cultures emerged in an exceptionally benign ecological habitat (i.e., faced relatively light existential pressures compared with other regions). We review the influence of the Gulf Stream on the Northwestern European climate as a source of these comparatively benign geographical conditions. We propose that the ecological conditions in which WEIRD societies emerged afforded them a basis to endorse happiness as a value and to idealize attaining its maximum level. To provide a nomological network for happiness maximization, we also studied some of its potential side effects, namely alcohol and drug consumption and abuse and the prevalence of mania. To evaluate our hypothesis, we reanalyze data from two large-scale studies on ideal levels of personal life satisfaction—the most common operationalization of happiness in psychology—involving respondents from 61 countries. We conclude that societies whose members seek to maximize happiness tend to be characterized as WEIRD, and generalizing this across societies can prove problematic if adopted at the ideological and policy level. © The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland; Institute of Psychology, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria; Department of Psychology, University of Essex, United Kingdom; Department of Education, Psychology, and Philosophy, University of Cagliari, Italy; Department of Psychology, Indiana University Northwest, United States; Department of Education, University of Roma Tre, Italy; SWPS University, Poland; Institute of Psychology, University of Brasilia, Brazil; Department of Psychological Sciences, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan; Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan; School of Psychology, Speech and Hearing, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Business, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong; Department of Applied Psychology, Lingnan University, Hong Kong; School of Psychology, University of Sussex, United Kingdom; Department of Psychology, Carleton University, United States; Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, United States; Graduate School of Management, NUCB Business School, Japan; Centre for Psychological Research and Social Intervention (CIS-Iscte), Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal; Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Medical Management Centre, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden; Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway; Psychology Department, Bahçeşehir University, Turkey; Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk, Poland; Department of Psychology, Iberoamerican University, United States; Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Poland; King’s Business School, King’s College London, United Kingdom; Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Luxembourg, United Kingdom; Department of Psychology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; Institute of Psychology, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church, Hungary; Research Centre of Natural Sciences, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Budapest, Hungary; Faculty of Psychology and Humanities, Universidad San Sebastián, Concepción, Chile; Department of Psychology, Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia; Institute of Psychology, University of Koblenz, Germany; Département Psychologie Clinique Du Sujet, Université Toulouse II; Department of General and Social Psychology, Dostoevsky Omsk State University, Russian Federation; Department of Psychology, West University of Timisoara, Romania; Universidad Nacional del Oeste; Universidad National de Hurlingham, Argentina; Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Ghana, Ghana; Faculty of Nursing and Health Sciences, Nord University, Norway; HULAB, El Salvador, San Salvador, El Salvador; School of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Estonia; Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, School of Business and Economics, Católica Lisbon Research Unit in Business and Economics, Portugal; Department of Psychology, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Portugal; Faculty of Psychology, University of Iceland, Iceland; Baze University Abuja, Nigeria; Department of Psychology, University of Limerick, Ireland; Olomouc University Social Health Institute, Palacky University, United States; Psychiatric Clinic Pro Mente Sana, Bratislava, Slovakia; Institute of Psychology, Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic; Department of Psychology, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Czech Republic; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka; Department of Business Administration, International Islamic University Malaysia, United Kingdom; Department of Psychological Studies, Universidad ICESI, United States; Department of Social Psychology, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, Netherlands; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia; Department of Psychology, University of Haripur, Pakistan; Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway; Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, Vilnius University; Department of Applied Psychology, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland; University of St. Cyril and Methodius of Trnava, Slovakia; King Saud University, Saudi Arabia; Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University, Saudi Arabia; Department of Psychology, National Chengchi University, Netherlands; School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland; Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, China; Institute for the Future of Human Society, Kyoto University, China
