Application of Cross Cultural Psychology

Happiness and well being

Wellbeing is not just the absence of disease or illness. It is a complex combination of a

person's physical, mental, emotional and social health factors. Wellbeing is strongly linked to
happiness and life satisfaction. In short, wellbeing could be described as how you feel about
yourself and your life.

Traditional measures of well-being focus on the objective circumstances of living such

as wealth, medical health, and living standards are commonly used to define well-being and life
quality.

Just like medical health is defined by universal criteria and all currencies can be
standardized through conversion to American dollar, in similar way people can define well-being
by what they can see and touch.

However well-being also contains a subjective dimension which involves how good
people feel about their lives. So, objective measure of well being is not enough. People who are
rich and medically healthy can also be depressed. People who are not rich and in poor health can
also be happy.

Wellbeing and Happiness

The term wellbeing is often used to describe happiness as well. As Fordyce (1983) used
the term, describing happiness as “an emotional sense of wellbeing—that goes by many names
(contentment, fulfilment, self-satisfaction, joy, peace of mind, etc.).

Effect of Environment on Well-Being

Interaction with the environment can threatens to move well-being up or down depending
upon positive and negative experience.

Strong and unexpected positive or negative experience will shift the sense of personal
well-being to abnormally higher or lower values, usually for a brief period, until adaptation
occurs. However, if the negative experience is sufficiently strong and sustained, homeostasis will
lack the power to restore equilibrium and SWB will remain below its set-point range.

External & Internal Factors Effecting Well-Being

1-External Factors:

 close relationships
 Money

The two most important sources for the defense of our SWB are close relationships and
money. Of these two, the most powerful buffer is a relationship with another human being that
involves mutual sharing of intimacies and support.

Money is also a very important external buffer, but there are misconceptions as to what
money can and cannot do in relation to personal well-being. At one hand one say that happiness
cant not be bought by money, but that’s also true that by money all the luxuries of life can be
afforded to bring comfort in one’s life.

2- Internal Factors

When we fail to control our external environment and SWB is threatened, our internal buffers
come into play. One of these would be constructive and positive thinking (cognitive processes)
in hard and testing times to minimize the impact of personal failure on positive feelings about
our self. As a consequence of such cognitive restructuring, the negative potential of a challenging
experience to damage well-being is deflected away from the core view of self. So the role of
these buffers is mainly to minimize the impact of personal failure.

Examples:

After facing personal failures in life, one can think in these possible ways to overcome
negative feelings: For example, one can find meaning in the event (“God is testing me”), fail to
take responsibility for the failure (“It was not my fault”) or regard the failure (e.g., dropping a
vase) as unimportant (“I did not need that old vase anyway.”).

Well-being Categories

It Includes two categories:

1- Material living conditions - housing • income • jobs

2- Quality of life - community • education • environment • governance • health • life
satisfaction • safety • work-life balance

Elements of Subjective Wellbeing

Elements of subjective well-being are

1. Happiness: • --an emotional state.

• --how you feel about yourself and the world.
 2- Satisfaction with Life: • --more global judgment about your acceptance with your life.

• --more of a cognitive assessment/ thinking about how much

you are satisfied with your life.

3- Emotional stability: • --low level of neuroticism.

 --lack of serious personality flaws.

 Neurosis: “poor ability to adapt to ones environment, an
inability to change ones life patterns, and the inability to
develop a richer, more complex, more satisfying personality."

Psychological components of Subjective Well Being (SWB)

1. High self esteem • Most important predictor of SWB • Western cultures value individual
achievement and success • Eastern cultures value group success. • Self esteem tied to group
membership.
2. Sense of perceived control. • Belief some measure of control over life events (in cases
where possible). Internal locus of control is best. It is personal control; a belief that you can
control or mold the outcomes.
3. Extroversion • Higher SWB in people who are interested in things outside themselves. •
Extroverts generally have higher SWB. • Seek and enjoy company of others. • Doesn’t mean
that all introverts are unhappy. • Introverts prefer join a few close friends.
4. Optimism • “a tendency to expect the best possible outcome; to dwell on the most hopeful
aspect of a situation.” • Look to the future with hope and positive expectations. Optimistic
explanatory style is best.

Explanatory style example • Professor doesn’t return my phone call about writing a
recommendation.

• Negative: • professor hates me; he is ignoring me.

• Positive: • he might be out of town, will respond when he returns. • Make another call in a
week.

5- Positive social relationships • High correlations of SWB with satisfaction with family and
friends. • Social support and emotional intimacy. • Important for physical and psychological
health. • Strongest external source of SWB. • Social contact better predictor than wealth,
education or career.
6- Sense of meaning and purpose. • Defined as spirituality by some. • Doesn’t have to be
religious. • Belief that your life is connected to a greater good. • Your life will make a
difference.
Happiness & SWB correlates strongly with national wealth

Happiness and subjective wellbeing tended to be higher in countries that provided citizens with
material comfort, social security, education, healthcare, and political rights.

The countries who are able to provide such basic living facilities to its people were found out to
be more happy and increased sense of wellbeing than the less privileged and under developed
countries facing struggles over basic living rights.

Well-Being and Income Inequality/ Economic Distress

The countries where income inequality prevails, few groups are earning beyond their needs, and
few are unable to properly feed their families face increased economic distress. Resultantly
lowered happiness and sense of wellbeing was observed among these people. Research results
supported this view after investigating Hong Kong population where economic distress was high
and wellbeing of those people was low.

Cross Cultural Psychology and Wellbeing

 The advancement in research areas of cross cultural psychology resulted in increased

knowledge and awareness about one’s own culture and about other cultures as well.
 The increased awareness has also created tolerance in people for others with different
cultural backgrounds.
 The research has shown the factors linked with wellbeing such as money, income, social
support. And it was shown that level of wellbeing is not equally experienced across all
cultural groups.
 There are groups with economic distress and poverty will be low on mental well being,
by knowing this fact, one can empathize with them.
 Also the cultures experiencing high well-being and happiness such as people from
Denmark and Switzerland can be used as role models to investigate their reasons of
happiness and plan strategies to implement them on people from less happy cultures and
having lower wellbeing such as south eastern countries.
 Other research findings shown that people who are more expressive will be experiencing
greater happiness and satisfaction than shy and reserved people. Such difference was
recorded in comparing sample from Asian and western counties.