Happiness Across Cultures: Individualism, Collectivism, and Well-being

This report examines the relationship between happiness and the individualism/collectivism domain of culture, highlighting cross-cultural differences in personal and interpersonal social values. It explores how cultural conceptions of happiness are critical aspects of subjective well-being, often neglected in research. The report contrasts individual-oriented cultural conceptions of SWB, developed within a Euro-American framework, with East Asian views of the self, emphasizing the importance of relational ways of being and in-group membership in collectivist cultures. Individualistic cultures, on the other hand, prioritize personal goals, self-reliance, and freedom of choice. The report references several cross-country studies demonstrating that societal happiness is predicted by individualism, and it concludes by noting that individualism and collectivism are key cultural models impacting advertising content and persuasiveness, with different cultures prioritizing either individual or group goals.

Report

Is there a relationship between what makes people happy and the
individualism/collectivism domain of culture?
The cross-cultural differences among personal and interpersonal social values like
collectivism and individualism. The cultural conceptions of happiness are the critical aspects of
subjective well-being that have largely been neglected. It is important to explore that what people
think regarding the happiness which is being embedded in the world of values that has
constructed by the unique cultural tradition (Minkov et al., 2020). People consider happiness as
the desirable and positive inner state of mind. The study for the individual oriented cultural
conceptions of SWB has been developed within the European American framework which
incorporates the effective understanding and implicit assumptions which are being shared by
both the participants and researchers.
Another suitable characteristic of Euro-American cultural conceptions of SWB is explicit
pursuit that effectively claims that individuals need to actively strive for the happiness and also
pursuit the happiness should not be jeopardised. In terms of summarising the free individual
unceasingly pursuing happiness with the suitable blessing of society that effectively portrays the
Euro-American cultural conceptions for the individual oriented SWB which are composed of
personal accountability and explicit pursuit (Hamamura et al., 2021). For the east Asian view of
the self, the suitable view of connected fluid, flexibility and committed being is bound to others.
In the east Asian culture of collectivism, institutions and social customers are all conspire to
foster the relational way of being focused and in-group membership.
Hence, most of Asian cultures effectively advocate effective priority of collective welfare
over the personal interests, diligent role performance, reward self-control and self-cultivation.
Collectivism is the social mechanism for enforcing or organising the cooperation of group, for
the dependence of people on family, neighbourhood and other networks of generalised for social
reciprocity. With the cross cultural data, it is possible that these findings are collectivist cultures
that shows culture values like humility (Pizarro & Arman, 2021). Collectivism is not based on
the effective kind of universalistic as fulfilling for one of the social roles and meetings for the
effective responsibilities to in-group. It revolves around the honour, face and public reputation as
it is concerned with the poor countries as it the overall cultural survival mechanism for
importance for group solidarity.
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Individualistic cultures are well known to focus over the differentiation of self from others
and effective social context as it considers the individual to be independent and autonomous.
Freedom of choice, personal goals and self-reliance are some of effective essential factors which
are focused over the individualistic cultures. In regard of collectivistic culture tends to value the
group goals, maintain overall relationships, harmony in groups and duties and obligations (Li et
al., 2022). For example, the individualistic cultures, social standards of behaviour require
individuals to be assertive and not to show signs of weakness. Besides from this, collectivistic
cultures are more attuned for the social appropriateness of behaviours and also expected to obey
the overall authority. Individualism and collectivism comprise the main cultural that has been
explored for studying the advertising content and persuasiveness of ad appeals. Both the terms
have been conceptualised as two powerful cultural models that depict broad difference among
nations.
The collectivistic cultures lead to endorse in group goals like family integrity and well-being
of in-group whereas the members of individualistic cultures which are being independent and
pursing the individual’s goals. For instance, individuals from the eastern side include
collectivistic cultures that have been shown towards the report of suitable symptoms in
interpersonal terms whereas westerns use existential and cognitive. In Japan, the individuals are
motivated to attribute failure and effective success towards the group (Sotgiu et al., 2021).
Several large cross country studies have documented that the societal happiness is predicted
through individualism beyond other social, economic and cultural factors that leads to
characterising societies.
Happiness is not the single faceted factors as within and across the cultures, individuals
conceptualise happiness in different manner. Furthermore, the individualist cultures and
collectivist cultures places focuses on several basic values as people who live in individualist
cultures tends to believe effective competition, independence and personal achievement are also
important. Individuals in western nations like US, England and Australia score high on the
individualism. However, the difference between collectivism and individualism lies more in
which different issues and each instance focuses on instead of having opposite positions on the
same issues.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Hamamura, T., Chen, Z., Chan, C. S., Chen, S. X., & Kobayashi, T. (2021). Individualism with
Chinese characteristics? Discerning cultural shifts in China using 50 years of printed
texts. American Psychologist, 76(6), 888.
Li, R., Peng, K., Jiang, L., Li, J., & Fei, W. (2022). Is the need for autonomy universal?
Investigations with three large-scale global datasets.
Minkov, M., Welzel, C., & Schachner, M. (2020). Cultural evolution shifts the source of
happiness from religion to subjective freedom. Journal of Happiness Studies, 21(8),
2873-2888.
Pizarro, I. V., & Arman, G. (2021). The impact of collectivism orientation and gender identity on
work-life balance and life satisfaction relationship: A UK–Spain comparison. Journal of
Management and Business Education, 4(1), 61-48.
Sotgiu, I., Tirloni, L., & Zapata, J. T. (2021). Cultural Similarities and Variations in the
Conceptions of Happiness and Unhappiness: A Comparison Between Italy and
Honduras. Psychology and Developing Societies, 33(2), 232-257.
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