I uncovered a mystery. One of the big "world happiness index" surveys had the Chinese in top place, as world's happiest community -- but then the Chinese dat...
But while there may be benefits to moving past standard economic factors as markers of a country’s success, the definition of happiness isn’t necessarily standard around the globe.
Culture can influence how people in different countries respond to surveys of happiness, says macropsychologist Kuba Krys of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, who is not involved with the report. “We should be careful of … making big claims based on such comparisons.”
Moreover, the concept of happiness, as it’s currently defined and understood, may suffer from a Western bias, one common in societies that social scientists refer to as WEIRD — Western, educated, industrial, rich and democratic, Krys says.
They only measured 32 countries in the first place so it wasn't that scientific to begin with, but the next year they just removed the top two countries lol
I’m very skeptical of nearly all surveys, but global “happiness” surveys especially.
Not all cultures value happiness over other aspects of well-being
True, but also it's wild that they just decided not to count China and keep counting everyone else.
They only measured 32 countries in the first place so it wasn't that scientific to begin with, but the next year they just removed the top two countries lol
Apparently they did do the counting, they just didn't release the results.
Agreed. I think a lot of people answer like: well I've got [signifier1] [signifier2] [signifier3] so I guess I must be happy.