“Because I’m Happy!”: Happiness in the East and the West

People share a universal yearning for happiness. But the answer to the question "What constitutes happiness?" is far from universal. That which boosts the happy neurochemicals (Bergland, 2012) in Ms. X might not do so in Ms. Y. After all, one cannot expect to see a standard "definition" of happiness when the word has so greatly evolved over the 500 years of its use. Plus, "happiness" continues to remain vastly heterogeneous (Brooks, 2021) in interpretation across cultures even today. This article attempts to explore the differences in perceptions of happiness and well-being in the East and the West.

I and we, cycling and linearity

Two words of caution: First, culture is an intricate amalgam of a myriad of beliefs, values, attitudes, and practices (Prinz, 2020). The following discussion is limited to one or a few aspects of culture, even though it is much more complex in reality. Second, nations are not the same as cultures. Diversity abounds in every nation despite the existence of an overarching cultural norm. Hence, differences between the East and West are elucidated in general terms.

Most Asian cultures are collectivist (Robson, 2017) and emphasize the group over the self (Cherry, n.d.). Social cohesion, harmony, common values, and interdependence are ideas that assume paramount importance. Individualistic (Robson, 2017) cultures prioritize the self (Cherry, n.d.), and personal achievement gains precedence over group accomplishment.

Next, naive dialecticism, in short, is a set of East-Asian, publicly-held beliefs that revolve around eternal dynamism and cycling, where one state or element follows from another opposite state. The opposites are closely linked—good becomes bad, love turns into hate, friendship into animosity, and light into dark. Therefore, people expect constant shifts from the status quo and contradictions to coexist. People are aware of the existence of such opposites and consider both sides before making a decision. On the contrary, cycling is absent among Western beliefs, and change is perceived as a linear notion with permanent transformations. With such factors playing a huge part in differentiating cultures, it comes as no surprise that the perceptions of happiness and well-being differ along cultural lines.

Happiness perceptions: Evidence from experiments

In most Asian cultures, happiness and well-being derive from obligations and validation from others in society. A study measured the extent to which Asian American and European American students perceived the fulfillment of their parents’ expectations and how that impacted subjective well-being. Asian Americans reported that their parents placed specific expectations on them, and they faced a greater likelihood (Newman, 2019) of being unable to fulfill these expectations. As a consequence, they reported lower levels of well-being than European American participants.

In one study (Newman, 2019), Asian and European American students were asked to give an exam where all students performed well and were happy. On follow-up, Asian students reported a significantly lower level of happiness than on test day compared to the European Americans, who were still pretty content with themselves. This can be ascribed to dialectic thinking among Asians, which suggests that being too happy might lead to bad things, thus reducing their level of happiness.

Dialecticism can lead to indecision, which in turn contributes to lower levels of happiness and well-being. Constantly brooding over a decision made entails lower life satisfaction. This tendency was observed among East Asian students more than in their European North American counterparts.

The Cantril Ladder

Source: Oman, S. (2021). Discovering ‘the New Science of Happiness’ and Subjective Well-being. In: Understanding Well-being Data. New Directions in Cultural Policy Research. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

World Happiness Report

The World Happiness Report (WHR) is one of the few global, large-scale exercises that attempt to quantify happiness (latest edition: March 2022). Nations are ranked based on a life evaluation question of the Cantril Ladder format. The respondents are asked to value their lives today on this scale.

A comparison between the regions in the image shows that in Western Europe, North America, and ANZ (Australia and New Zealand), a greater proportion of people value their lives from 7 onwards. In contrast, the graphs of East and Southeast Asia show a clustering of responses at 5 and a smaller proportion of people evaluating their lives as a 7, 8, 9, or 10. Although these graphs support the cultural differentiators between the East and the West, it must be noted that besides cultural factors, there are various economic, social, and political factors that determine happiness and satisfaction levels.

Source: World Happiness Report, 2017; Graphs by Akshaya Balaji

Cultural distance

The cultural fixation index (CF_ST) is a measure to quantify the cultural distance between nations. The figure below plots the Happiness (Cantril Ladder) Scores and Cultural Distances of nations (more than 26 of them being Asian and African nations) with respect to the USA.

Non-WEIRD countries are distant from the USA, and their happiness levels are found to be lower than those in the WEIRD nations. A negative correlation (-0.5803) between the cultural distance of nations from the USA and happiness can be ascribed to the aforementioned vast cultural differences in how happiness is conceptualized in the East and the West.

Happiness Essential Reads

When It Comes to Happiness, Can You Try Too Hard?

Pain Is Inevitable, Suffering Is Optional

Source: Cultural Distance; Graph by Akshaya Balaji

Ultimately, a happy population (Arafa, 2019) is healthy, productive, supportive, and resilient. Thanks to the new methods that evaluate nations across various parameters beyond the GDP and per capita income, governments and policymakers have access to the right tools to bolster happiness and satisfaction among the citizenry because, as Thomas Jefferson once said, “the care of human life & happiness...is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

This post was written by Akshaya Balaji, Junior Research Assistant at the Department of Economics at Monk Prayogshala, India.