Came across an interesting report via MindHacks on the different conceptions of happiness between East Asians and European-Americans. I’m always happy to see research that closely and thoughtfully considers the impact of culture on pretty much any behavior or concept often taken as universal. As an anthropology and psychology student I always approached psychological research with hesitation. This was mainly due to the sensitization of cross-cultural differences that my anthro education helped me develop, but also because when I once questioned the validity of a “cross-cultural” psychology experiment that consisted of a group of Americans and Western Europeans, my professor affirmed that this, indeed, at least in psychology, qualified as such. I found this to be unsettling when said experiment was attempting to make very broad claims about human behavior (I forget now what the experiment was testing exactly, but the professor’s response is still very clear in my mind).
Anyhow, according to the current report, East Asians (represented by Filipino and Japanese participants) and European-Americans (represented by people living in the US) possess different conceptions of happiness:
“Specifically, in North American cultural contexts, happiness tends to be defined in terms of personal achievement. Individuals engaging in these cultures are motivated to maximize the experience of positive affect. Moreover, happiness is best predicted by self-esteem. In contrast, in East Asian cultural contexts, happiness tends to be defined in terms of interpersonal connectedness. Individuals engaging in these cultures are motivated to maintain a balance between positive and negative affects. Moreover, happiness is best predicted by perceived embeddedness of the self in a social relationship.”
And it is suggested that these differences are due in large part to cultural variations in the perception of the self. In European and North American cultures
“…there is a strong belief in the independence and autonomy of the self. The self is believed to be the center of thought, action, and motivation. It is bounded and separate from other such selves. Social relations are quite important; yet, they are constructed in accordance with the fundamental assumption about the independence of each self. Specifically, they are based on choice of each self to enter such relations. These ideas are widely distributed in European-American cultural contexts and, in fact, they are quite instrumental in organizing daily practices, routine discourses and narratives, and institutions of these contexts.
Given the independent model, the most central aspect of the self is a set of internal attributes. Individuals are therefore highly motivated to find and affirm the positivity of these attributes…happiness itself is often construed as one of those internal attributes that are to be pursued and attained via personal striving. In other words, happiness is likely to be constructed as personal achievement.”
In contrast, East Asian cultures tend to emphasize the interconnectedness of the individual.
“The self-in-relationship-with-others is believed to be the locus of thought, action, and motivation. The symbolic boundary between the self and other such selves is blurred and constantly negotiated through social interaction…Ideas about the interdependent nature of human being are quite widespread in East Asian cultures. Moreover, these ideas are often underlying the practices, daily routines, discourses and social institutions that, as a whole, define the social realities of these cultural contexts.
Individuals in East Asian cultural contexts are highly motivated to adjust and fit themselves to the pertinent social relations. Commitments to social roles, social obligations, and readiness to respond to social expectations are all manifestations of this socially oriented motivation for realizing an interdependent self. This implies that happiness in East Asian cultures is likely to depend crucially on the realization of positive social relationship of which the self is part…happiness is seen as an inter-subjective state that is grounded in mutual sympathy, compassion, and support. In short, happiness is constructed as realization of social harmony.“
The goal of the research was to reevaluate the common understanding of emotions as biologically determined and therefore universal, regardless of where or by whom they are experienced. In recent years, more culturally oriented psychologists, like those responsible for the current report, have sought to show that emotions are “not the direct outcome of physiological or neurological mechanisms…[but] are always situated and embedded in specific cultural contexts. Accordingly, they are fully saturated with cultural meanings.”
Tagged: anthropology, culture, emotion, psychology, research