[MUSIC PLAYING]

[SPEAKER] One of the striking things

is that Latinos here in the United
States, but also throughout Latin America,
tend to report higher than expected
levels of happiness. Places that you
would think
that because of the relative economic
disadvantages, that you would find less
happiness.
This tends to be really surprising to
people. I've even seen it described
as a "paradox of happiness." We think that
more money should be linked
to greater happiness, and we just don't
find that to be
necessarily true. We're purporting to
understand happiness
from just one context, and one
perspective that tends to emphasize the
self over other things,
and that's insufficient, and so we should
instead pay attention to the data that
tells us that there's these higher
levels of happiness
in this part of the world, and start
thinking about what that means for
understanding happiness. Maybe it's not
so much that we should be
distracted by what money means for
happiness, but we should instead be
thinking about what are the sources for
happiness that people
have there, and what you find in the
Latinos and the Latin Americans that
have been studied,
is that it's relationships that are
really important. This is a culture that
doesn't emphasize the self
in the same way as American culture
tends to. What you find throughout Latin
America, is greater connections to your
relationships: greater pro-social
behavior.
And it may be that that's what's the key
link to the greater happiness that we
see
in Latin American societies. The emphasis
in these cultures
is on managing relationships in ways
that put others before the self.
So, adjusting to the preferences of
others via acts as simple as
what we're eating or what we're doing
for fun, or they can be as serious as
what career we're pursuing,
what person we might marry, and how we're
going to take care of our loved ones
during crisis.
Things that sound pretty simple, and they
are, but that when you get into the
details,
it starts to be something that is more
likely to occur if you're socialized
into thinking of it as normal, rather
than if you're socialized into thinking
of it as
an effort that you would have to put
forth. So for example,
getting together with your family on
weekends, being there if somebody's
moving,
you know, showing up at the hospital if
somebody's sick. Showing up for all the
baptisms and birthday celebrations and
holiday events. Those are things that are
really prioritized.
It emphasizes having mutual obligations
to others. There's a definite negative
connotation to obligation in English.
If you say the same word in Spanish,
"obligación," it really doesn't sound so
negative.
And it's almost a stand-up quality; you
know to meet
the duties of what you need to do in
your life, to be there to for the people
that need you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]