The idea that people want to be happy seems obvious to laypeople and has been confirmed in cross-cultural empirical research. But, paradoxically, a growing body of research indicates that pursing happiness actually impairs well-being. However, most research on the pursuit of happiness and well-being has been conducted in the United States, leaving open the possibility that this relationship depends on culture.
For instance, happiness in an individualistic culture like the United States may be defined in highly self-oriented ways, whereas happiness in collectivist cultures found in regions such as East Asia may be defined in terms of social engagement. Because social connection is a robust predictor of well-being, it may be that pursuit of happiness leads to higher well-being in cultures where happiness is defined in more socially engaged ways, leading people to engage in social behaviors — like spending more time with friends and family — in the pursuit of happiness.
This hypothesis was tested in a large-scale cross-cultural published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Ford and colleagues (2015) (PDF, 114KB)opens in new window had undergraduates from four different cultures that vary along the individualistic to collectivist continuum (United States, Germany, Russia, East Asia) complete surveys that assessed well-being, motivation to pursue happiness, and the extent to which happiness was defined in socially engaged ways.
Replicating previous work, motivation to pursue happiness was associated with lower well-being in the United States. However, consistent with the speculation that this might be a culturally-mediated effect, motivation to pursue happiness was associated with higher well-being in the collectivist cultures, Russia and East Asia. There was no significant relationship between these factors for Germany, but the trend was negative, consistent with its classification as a more individualistic culture.
The relationship between motivation to pursue happiness and well-being was mediated by cross-cultural differences in the relationship between motivation to pursue happiness and socially engaged definitions of happiness: motivation to pursue happiness was associated with stronger socially engaged definitions of happiness in the collectivist cultures, but there was no relationship between these factors in the individualistic cultures.
These results suggest that in cultures where happiness is defined in terms of social engagement, people who are more strongly motivated to pursue happiness may do so in socially engaged ways, which promotes well-being.
Of course, these results do not elucidate causal relationships, and although only undergraduate students were tested to control for effects of socioeconomic status and age, these factors may prove to be important mediating factors. Nevertheless, these results provide an important take-home message for those of us seeking to be happier: across all four cultures, individuals who defined happiness in more socially engaged ways had higher well-being, regardless of how strongly motivated they were to pursue happiness. Thus, happiness may be achieved by simply orienting oneself toward social connections and engagement.
Citation:
Ford, B. Q., Dmitrieva, J. O., Heller, D., Chentsova-Dutton, Y., Grossmann, I., Tamir, M., Uchida, Y., Koopmann-Holm, B., Floerke, V. A., Uhrig, M., Bokhan, T., Mauss, I. B. (2015). Culture shapes whether the pursuit of happiness predicts higher or lower well-being. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(6), 1053–1062. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000108
Note: This article is in the Basic / Experimental Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Basic / Experimental Psychology topic area.