Introduction to a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Well-Being: Combining Life Satisfaction and Interdependent Happiness Across 49 Different Cultures

How can one conclude that well-being is higher in country A than country B, when well-being is being measured according to the way people in country A think about well-being? We address this issue by proposing a new culturally sensitive method to comparing societal levels of well-being. We support our reasoning with data on life satisfaction and interdependent happiness focusing on individual and family, collected mostly from students, across forty-nine countries. We demonstrate that the relative idealization of the two types of well-being varies across cultural contexts and are associated with culturally different models of selfhood. Furthermore, we show that rankings of societal well-being based on life satisfaction tend to underestimate the contribution from interdependent happiness. We introduce a new culturally sensitive method for calculating societal well-being, and examine its construct validity by testing for associations with the experience of emotions and with individualism-collectivism. This new culturally sensitive approach represents a slight, yet important improvement in measuring well-being

Family first: Evidence of consistency and variation in the value of family versus personal happiness across 49 different cultures

People care about their own well-being, but also about the well-being of their families. It is currently however unknown how much people tend to value their own and their family’s well-being. A recent study documented that people value family happiness over personal happiness across four cultures. In this study, we sought to replicate this finding across a larger sample size (N = 12,819) and a greater number of countries (N = 49), We found that the strength of the idealization of family over personal happiness preference was small (average Cohen’s ds = .20 with country levels varying from -.02 to almost .48), but ubiquitous, i.e., direction presented in 98% of the studied countries, 73-75% with statistical significance and .40 and .30). Importantly, we did not find strong support for traditional theories in cross-cultural psychology that associate collectivism with greater prioritization of the family versus the individual; country level individualism-collectivism was not associated with variation in the idealization of family versus individual happiness. Our findings indicate that no matter how much various populists abuse the argument of “protecting family life” to disrupt emancipation, family happiness seems to be a pan-culturally phenomenon. Family well-being is a key ingredient of social fabric across the world, and should be acknowledged by psychology and well-being researchers, and by progressive movements too

Personal life satisfaction as a measure of societal happiness is an individualistic presumption: Evidence from fifty countries

Numerous studies document that societal happiness is correlated with individualism, but the nature of this phenomenon remains understudied. In the current paper, we address this gap and test the reasoning that individualism correlates with societal happiness because the most common measure of societal happiness (i.e., country-level aggregates of personal life satisfaction) is individualism-themed. With the data collected from 13,009 participants across fifty countries, we compare associations of four types of happiness (out of which three are more collectivism-themed than personal life satisfaction) with two different measures of individualism. We replicated previous findings by demonstrating that societal happiness measured as country-level aggregate of personal life satisfaction is correlated with individualism. Importantly though, we also found that the country-level aggregates of the collectivism-themed measures of happiness do not tend to be significantly correlated with individualism. Implications for happiness studies and for policy makers are signaled

Happiness Maximization Is a WEIRD Way of Living

Psychological science tends to treat subjective wellbeing and happiness synonymously. We start from the assumption that subjective wellbeing 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 WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) 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., compared to other regions, they faced relatively light existential pressures. We review the influence of the Gulfstream on the North-Western 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 idealise attaining its maximum level. To provide a nomological network for “happiness maximization”, we also studied its several potential side-effects: alcohol and drug consumption and abuse, and the prevalence of mania. To evaluate our hypothesis, we re-analyse 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 a WEIRD, and generalizing this across societies can prove problematic if adopted at the ideological and policy level

Introduction to a culturally sensitive measure of well-being: Combining life satisfaction and interdependent happiness across 49 different cultures

How can one conclude that well-being is higher in country A than country B, when wellbeing is being measured according to the way people in country A think about wellbeing? We address this issue by proposing a new culturally sensitive method to comparing societal levels of well-being. We support our reasoning with data on life satisfaction and interdependent happiness focusing on individual and family, collected mostly from students, across forty-nine countries. We demonstrate that the relative idealization of the two types of wellbeing varies across cultural contexts and are associated with culturally different models of selfhood. Furthermore, we show that rankings of societal well-being based on life satisfaction tend to underestimate the contribution from interdependent happiness. We introduce a new culturally sensitive method for calculating societal well-being, and examine its construct validity by testing for associations with the experience of emotions and with individualism-collectivism. This new culturally sensitive approach represents a slight, yet important improvement in measuring well-being

Societal emotional environments and cross-cultural differences in life satisfaction: A forty-nine country study.

In this paper, we introduce the concept of ‘societal emotional environment’: the emotional climate of a society (operationalized as the degree to which positive and negative emotions are expressed in a society). Using data collected from 12,888 participants across 49 countries, we show how societal emotional environments vary across countries and cultural clusters, and we consider the potential importance of these differences for well-being. Multilevel analyses supported a ‘double-edged sword’ model of negative emotion expression, where expression of negative emotions predicted higher life satisfaction for the expresser but lower life satisfaction for society. In contrast, partial support was found for higher societal life satisfaction in positive societal emotional environments. Our study highlights the potential utility and importance of distinguishing between positive and negative emotion expression, and adopting both individual and societal perspectives in well-being research. Individual pathways to happiness may not necessarily promote the happiness of others

Unpackaging the link between economic inequality and self-construal

Past research has shown that economic inequality shapes individuals’ self-construals. However, it has been unclear which dimensions of self-construal are associated with and affected by economic inequality. A correlational (Study 1: N = 264) and an experimental study (Study 2: N = 532) provided converging evidence linking perceived economic inequality with two forms of independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal: Difference from Others and Self-Reliance. In Study 3 (N = 12,634) societal differences in objective economic inequality across 48 nations predicted feelings of Difference from Others, but not Self-Reliance. Importantly, we found no significant associations of economic inequality with the other six dimensions of self-construal. Our findings help extend previous results linking economic inequality to forms of “social distance.”

Synthesis, structure, and biological activity of ferrocenyl carbohydrate conjugates.

Seven ferrocenyl carbohydrate conjugates were synthesized. Coupling reactions of monosaccharide derivatives with ferrocene carbonyl chloride produced {6-N-(methyl 2,3,4-tri-O-acetyl-6-amino-6-deoxy-alpha-D-glucopyranoside)}-1-ferrocene carboxamide (3), {1-O-(2,3,4,6-tetra-O-benzyl-D-glucopyranose)}-1-ferrocene carboxylate (4), and {6-O-(1,2,3,4-tetra-O-acetyl-beta-D-glucopyranose)}-1-ferrocene carboxylate (5). Similarly, 1,1'-bis(carbonyl chloride)ferrocene was coupled with the appropriate sugars to produce the disubstituted analogues bis{6-N-(methyl 2,3,4-tri-O-acetyl-6-amino-6-deoxy-alpha-D-glucopyranoside)}-1,1'-ferrocene carboxamide (8), bis{1-O-(2,3,4,6-tetra-O-benzyl-D-glucopyranose)}-1,1'-ferrocene carboxylate (9), and bis{6-O-(1,2,3,4-tetra-O-acetyl-beta-D-glucopyranose)}-1,1'-ferrocene carboxylate (10). {6-N-(Methyl-6-amino-6-deoxy-alpha-D-glucopyranoside)}-1-ferrocene carboxamide monohydrate (12) was synthesized via amide coupling of an activated ferrocenyl ester with the corresponding carbohydrate. All compounds were characterized by elemental analysis, 1H NMR spectroscopy, and mass spectrometry. X-ray crystallography confirmed the solid-state structure of three ferrocenyl carbohydrate conjugates: 2-N-(1,3,4,6-tetra-O-acetyl-2-amino-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose)-1-ferrocene carboxamide (1), 1-S-(2,3,4,6-tetra-O-acetyl-1-deoxy-1-thio-D-glucopyranose)-1-ferrocene carboxylate (2), and 12. The above compounds, along with bis{2-N-(1,3,4,6-tetra-O-acetyl-2-amino-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose)}-1,1'-ferrocene carboxamide (6), bis{1-S-(2,3,4,6-tetra-O-acetyl-1-deoxy-1-thio-D-glucopyranose)}-1,1'-ferrocene carboxylate (7), and 2-N-(2-amino-2-deoxy-D-glucopyranose)-1-ferrocene carboxamide (11) were examined for cytotoxicity in cell lines (L1210 and HTB-129) and for antimalarial activity in Plasmodium falciparum strains (D10, 3D7, and K1, a chloroquine-resistant strain). In general, the compounds were nontoxic in the human cell line tested (HTB-129), and compounds 4, 7, and 9 showed moderate antimalarial activity in one or more of the P. falciparum strains