Happiness and Life Satisfaction (2017)
ourworldindata.org
ourworldindata.org
So for instance if you're Scandinavian you're expected to say you're happy. This is pretty much one of the first things everyone says when it comes to the region. And if you haven't thought too much about it lately, perhaps you are inclined to just tell the researcher a stock answer.
How do we know that people are not just saying what is expected of them? I think there's at least some evidence that people tend to do that when asked a question.
Plus, it seems human minds is completely sensible to auto-persuasion with methods as trivial as daily individual "say it loudly" and "visualize the situation has you already succeeded in the goal". So being completely acculturated to a social belief of "we are so happy in our land" can surely be granted some favorable credits.
That implies that not only they are not that happy but they are systemically lying for some reason. I find this scenario hard to believe.
> How do we know that people are not just saying what is expected of them?
I don't know much about statistics, but given a large enough sample size these folks probably an edge case. Source: gut feeling.
Hmm, I find it believable that people may systematically lie when asked at work whether they are happy with their personal life.
Actually I know a guy who had in a bar fight after a scenario you just described. He's still fine at his job.
It is not like you are going to be fired if you are a software engineer talking a bit about your life. However, "bringing you shit" and discussing it at work is not always welcomed especially in most competitive environments. I guess that people who worked in such environments know what I am talking about.
As an example, have a look at what two other users reply above.
I don't at all. Everytime my boss or coworkers have asked how I'm doing I've always said great unless I had an amusing anecdote. Even if I'm having a fight with my wife, I'm experiencing anxiety, or I'm feeling depressed. I could totally imagine this social rule being broader and stronger in other countries.
I don't think this is outlandish. In Japanese there are words for true feelings vs reported, societally expected ones:
I can't remember where I read it, but I read something that explained Scandinavian happiness through low expectations. At the beginning of the year, people were asked how they think they feel and be doing in a year, and the answer was marginally better. In a year, the researchers checked in, and people were generally doing marginally better. So it's probably closer to satisfaction than happiness.
> And various surveys have confirmed that people who say they are happy also tend to sleep better and express positive emotions verbally more frequently.
Couldn't better sleep be the cause for happiness?
Worried and anxious people don’t sleep very well.
Let me share this (free) book written by a psychologist that deals with happiness.
It's not the kind of hooray-optimist positive psychology, it's actually backed by research, with the results detailed in each chapter.
Tom Stevens: You Can Choose To Be Happy https://csulb.edu/~tstevens/
An amazing amount research on vit-d collected into a digestible web site.
(They already had to control for population demography - sex, race, education - why not for time of year?)
I think people like their organs more than they care about football. Hopefully that's history. I wouldn't derive nation's happiness from experience tourists had during a football match.