Measuring Happiness Can Be A Misery: Beyond the World Happiness Report
Can we measure how happy big groups of people are? The World Happiness Report tries to do exactly that – for entire nations! It is like a big mood check for countries. The WHR is a yearly ranking that looks at how happy people are around the world based on factors like income, social support, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. Basically, it tries to measure how satisfied and content people feel in different countries, giving us a snapshot of global well-being.
The challenge in a ranking like this is that happiness is probably one of the least understood and most sought-after emotions and experiences in human life. What does it mean to be happy? How do you know that you are doing well? Turns out there is no universal definition for this pleasant emotion.
Even people from countries that rank highest in the WHR are wondering how they made it to the top, like the Finnish-American professor of sociology, Jukka Savolainen (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/04/finland-happiness-lagom-hygge.html). Savolainen suspects his compatriots evaluate their lives and their life expectations in such a way that their actual life circumstances approximate their highest expectations. Happiness - by this definition - means that there is only a small gap between what people look for in life and what they actually find.
However, research consistently shows that different cultures around the world have unique concepts of well-being and happiness. While it is probably safe to assume that every human in any society has a desire to be happy, studies suggest that we aren’t completely alike in our happiness and that our interpretation of happiness may very well be dependent on our cultural contexts. As a result, this would affect how countries rank on the WHR.
You'll find more on this topic here: https://theculturemastery.com/2016/06/24/why-people-around-the-world-define-happiness-and-well-being-differently/
Check out the 2024 edition of the World Happiness Report: https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2024/WHR+24.pdf
𝙏𝙬𝙤 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙨 – 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝘾𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨 is the world’s #1 show on the business of culture and the culture of business. Christian Höferle and Brett Parry ponder culture in short bursts and deep dives, featuring your questions and comments related to culture, business, and personal growth.
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The music on this episode is provided courtesy of Sepalot.
“Duum Diip” - Artist: Sepalot - Label: Eskapaden - Copyright control
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