There have been a few studies that were pointing out people in Southern Italy live very long and happy lives (I think happiness was self-reported), despite living in relative poverty compared to developed countries. Sun + healthy diets + lots and lots of intense social interactions with family and close friends.
Isn’t that implied? How else can you measure happiness aside from someone telling you they’re happy?
Somewhat of a genuine question — curious if studies/surveys use some other way to measure happiness.
Of course, this wouldn't really work for a longitudinal study.
Productive usage of my time means I am not doing simple things the hard way, that I manage my attention, and that I spend time on things that I care about, not that I stop caring about my family.
Extending my example from above, American dining habits are: you stay in the restaurant for about as much time as what you need to eat/drink, then you go away (maybe gently nudged by staff to get out if you stop ordering something after 1 hour or so). Italian dining habits are: you go to dinner and you stay there until everyone has discussed about everything they wanted to discuss, no matter how long that takes.
I imagine for someone from the Italian culture your perspective would seem completely alien.
And regarding family members or friend that want to leave, surely everyone is mature enough to just get up and go when they have to. Why do you need to manage that for them?
My perspective never disallowed me from staying at the table for hours until everyone was saturated with friendly banter. I spent many months in Italy, Croatia, Spain, Georgia, Poland and elsewhere doing just that, and I consider it time spent productively - relaxation and socialization is important to me.
As an introvert, I find “lots and lots of intense social interactions” draining (by definition).
Granted, I do enjoy hanging out with friends and family, but often feel drained a bit afterwards.
Of course, I’m not advocating being a loner. I wouldn’t like that either.
My main point is, I wonder if extroverts — or those that are energized from intense social interactions — are more destined to be happy vs. introverts.
Sadly for introverts, that seems to be the case.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quiet-disadvantag...
I don't know. I'll actually extend your question to its extreme:
Does anyone know what the evolutionary advantage of being an introverted individual in a very social species is?
After all, humanity natural niche is persistence hunting and gathering-scavenging.
And of course, hunting itself took a long time to do, especially if you are doing persistence hunting with primitive tools and maybe fire. A long time to be lonely and tolerating it.
Do you think they're all doing it to piss off richer countries? :-)
Although as far as I can see, the paper has not been peer reviewed yet (but it's also quite old)
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistical-atlas/gis/viewer/?...
If you go strictly by the numbers, Scandinavia or Germany should be at the top: higher GDP, higher salaries, higher HDI (maybe even quite far away at the top).
Yet that doesn't happen: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/E...
The top 5 regions in the EU for life expectancy, both male and female, are in Southern Europe.