Almost everyone wants to be happy, but not everyone wants to be as happy as possible. The urge to max out happiness is strongest in Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic societies, the so-called WEIRD countries, and much weaker elsewhere.
That is the argument of a large international team of 71 researchers led by Kuba Krys of the Institute of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Their article was published online in Perspectives on Psychological Science on February 13, 2024.
Asking about the ideal, not the actual
Psychologists usually measure happiness with life satisfaction questions and treat higher scores as always better. The authors asked a different question: how happy would the ideal person be?
They reanalysed two cross-cultural surveys. One, by Ed Diener and colleagues, covered 7,167 people in 41 countries. The other, collected by Krys and collaborators, covered 12,819 people in 49 countries. Participants rated how much “the ideal or perfect person” would agree with standard life satisfaction statements.
In the Krys data, 97% of people wanted to be at least a little happy. But only around 15% said their ideal was the maximum possible, and about 25% said they did not want to be happier than they were, even though they were below the top of the scale.
Richer, more individualistic countries aim higher
Countries with higher ideals also tended to be happier, so the team controlled for actual happiness. Even then, measures of individualism, schooling, technological advancement, GDP per capita and democracy were all linked to higher happiness ideals once both datasets were combined.
The gaps were large. Northwestern Europe differed from the rest of the world by a Cohen’s d of 1.93. In Germany and Iceland, 86% and 84% of participants said the ideal was at least “very happy”. In Bhutan, Ghana, Nigeria, Japan and Pakistan, 70% or more put the ideal below that, reaching 81.5% in Bhutan.
A mild climate and its side effects
To explain the pattern, the authors turn to ecology. Countries with cool, navigable waters, protection from disease and few natural disasters set higher happiness ideals. They argue that the Gulf Stream gave Northwestern Europe an unusually mild, benign habitat, with lighter existential pressures than other regions faced, which they propose laid the ground for treating maximum happiness as a value.
They also looked at possible downsides. At the country level, higher happiness ideals went with more drug use, with correlations around .30, and more alcohol use and abuse, with combined correlations above .40. These links faded when WEIRDness was taken into account. The prevalence of bipolar disorder, which involves manic episodes of elevated mood, was also higher in countries with high happiness ideals, and that link stayed significant, though weaker, after controlling for WEIRDness.
The authors stress that all of this is country-level. It does not show that individuals who seek maximum happiness are the ones drinking or using drugs.
Their practical target is policy. Bodies such as the OECD increasingly treat life satisfaction as the ultimate outcome to raise, and the authors warn that generalizing the WEIRD ideal of maximum happiness across all societies can be problematic when it is built into ideology and policy.
Study Details:
- Title: Happiness Maximization Is a WEIRD Way of Living
- Authors: 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
- Journal: Perspectives on Psychological Science
- Publication Date: February 13, 2024
- DOI: 10.1177/17456916231208367