article · Perspectives on Psychological Science
Psychological science frequently equates subjective well-being with happiness, yet the goal of maximising happiness may be specific to particular cultural settings. Research examining ideal levels of personal life satisfaction across sixty-one countries indicates that happiness maximisation is primarily characteristic of Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic societies rather than a universal human ideal. This cultural tendency may stem from historically benign eco-environmental habitats, such as the climate shaped by the Gulf Stream in Northwestern Europe, which presented relatively low existential pressures. Furthermore, the drive to maximise happiness relates to potential adverse consequences, including mania as well as drug and alcohol misuse. Consequently, treating maximum happiness as a universal standard can create serious complications when applied to broader cross-cultural policy and ideology.
Assuming that all societies strive for maximum happiness can distort international social policies and well-being initiatives. Recognising that happiness maximisation is rooted in specific historical and ecological conditions helps prevent the imposition of culturally narrow psychological benchmarks on diverse populations, while also highlighting the potential mental health risks linked to pursuing extreme happiness.
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Psychological science tends to treat subjective well-being and happiness synonymously. We start from the assumption that subjective well-being is more than being happy to ask the fundamental question: What is the <i>ideal</i> level of happiness? From a cross-cultural perspective, we propose that the idealization of attaining maximum levels of happiness may be especially characteristic of Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies but less so for others. Searching for an explanation for why "happiness maximization" might have emerged in these societies, we turn to studies linking cultures to their eco-environmental habitat. We discuss the premise that WEIRD cultures emerged in an exceptionally benign ecological habitat (i.e., faced relatively light existential pressures compared with other regions). We review the influence of the Gulf Stream on the Northwestern European climate as a source of these comparatively benign geographical conditions. We propose that the ecological conditions in which WEIRD societies emerged afforded them a basis to endorse happiness as a value and to idealize attaining its maximum level. To provide a nomological network for happiness maximization, we also studied some of its potential side effects, namely alcohol and drug consumption and abuse and the prevalence of mania. To evaluate our hypothesis, we reanalyze data from two large-scale studies on ideal levels of personal life satisfaction-the most common operationalization of happiness in psychology-involving respondents from 61 countries. We conclude that societies whose members seek to maximize happiness tend to be characterized as WEIRD, and generalizing this across societies can prove problematic if adopted at the ideological and policy level.
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DOI: 10.1177/17456916231208367
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