Lay definitions of happiness across nations: The Primacy of inner harmony and relational connectedness

In well-being research the term happiness is often used as synonymous with life satisfaction. However, little is known about lay people's understanding of happiness. Building on the available literature, this study explored lay definitions of happiness across nations and cultural dimensions, analyzing their components and relationship with participants' demographic features. Participants were 2799 adults (age range = 30-60, 50% women) living in urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, and United States. They completed the Eudaimonic and Hedonic Happiness Investigation (EHHI), reporting, among other information, their own definition of happiness. Answers comprised definitions referring to a broad range of life domains, covering both the contextual-social sphere and the psychological sphere. Across countries and with little variation by age and gender, inner harmony predominated among psychological definitions, and family and social relationships among contextual definitions. Whereas relationships are widely acknowledged as basic happiness components, inner harmony is substantially neglected. Nevertheless, its cross-national primacy, together with relations, is consistent with the view of an ontological interconnectedness characterizing living systems, shared by several conceptual frameworks across disciplines and cultures. At the methodological level, these findings suggest the potential of a bottom-up, mixed method approach to contextualize psychological dimensions within culture and lay understanding.
- Financial support was provided to some of the authors by the University of Rijeka, Croatia (project 13.04.1.3.05); the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA; grant PD 105685) the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway; the National Research Foundation of South Africa (CPRR 13092547210-91557 and RN60571-NRF IPRR-UID 85649); the Department of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University, USA; the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science through national funds and co-financed by FEDER under the PT2020; UNAM-PAPIIT IG300415 Mexico (UID/PSI/01662/2013).
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