Happiness Maximization Is a WEIRD Way of Living.

Psychological science tends to treat subjective well-being and happiness synonymously. We start from the assumption that subjective well-being is more than being happy to ask the fundamental question: What is the ideal level of happiness? From a cross-cultural perspective, we propose that the idealization of attaining maximum levels of happiness may be especially characteristic of Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies but less so for others. Searching for an explanation for why "happiness maximization" might have emerged in these societies, we turn to studies linking cultures to their eco-environmental habitat. We discuss the premise that WEIRD cultures emerged in an exceptionally benign ecological habitat (i.e., faced relatively light existential pressures compared with other regions). We review the influence of the Gulf Stream on the Northwestern European climate as a source of these comparatively benign geographical conditions. We propose that the ecological conditions in which WEIRD societies emerged afforded them a basis to endorse happiness as a value and to idealize attaining its maximum level. To provide a nomological network for happiness maximization, we also studied some of its potential side effects, namely alcohol and drug consumption and abuse and the prevalence of mania. To evaluate our hypothesis, we reanalyze data from two large-scale studies on ideal levels of personal life satisfaction-the most common operationalization of happiness in psychology-involving respondents from 61 countries. We conclude that societies whose members seek to maximize happiness tend to be characterized as WEIRD, and generalizing this across societies can prove problematic if adopted at the ideological and policy level.

Validating the Concord Index as a measure of family relationships in China.

Interest in family functioning across cultures has become more widespread, but our instruments have not kept pace by measuring constructs that are especially relevant outside the West. We present the psychometric properties of the Concord Index (CI) in the family context. The CI examines (qihe), translated most closely into English as concord. The term includes concepts of harmony and mutuality, and is a characteristic of dyadic relationships valued in Chinese cultural groups that form about a fifth of the world's population. The scale was adapted to measure 2 types of family relationships: specific dyadic relationships within the family between any individual family member and another (the A-P perspective), as well as an individual's composite assessment of all his/her family relationships (the A-FAM perspective). The 10-item measure was internally consistent, stable over 2 weeks, and showed factor invariance across gender, age, relationship, and household size for A-P and A-FAM perspectives. The A-P correlated negatively with disagreement with the partner. The A-FAM correlated with measures of family functioning, well-being, leisure time spent with family members, and with measures of emotional but not physical symptoms. Furthermore, the A-FAM measure added predictive power to individual measures of emotional functioning in assessing subjective happiness. The CI adds to other "imported" instruments designed to measure family function in Chinese populations because of its brevity, its adaptability for measuring dyadic and global family relationships across family roles, its easily understood items, and its incremental validity in predicting well-being beyond individually focused measures.

How shared preferences in music create bonds between people: values as the missing link.

How can shared music preferences create social bonds between people? A process model is developed in which music preferences as value-expressive attitudes create social bonds via conveyed value similarity. The musical bonding model links two research streams: (a) music preferences as indicators of similarity in value orientations and (b) similarity in value orientations leading to social attraction. Two laboratory experiments and one dyadic field study demonstrated that music can create interpersonal bonds between young people because music preferences can be cues for similar or dissimilar value orientations, with similarity in values then contributing to social attraction. One study tested and ruled out an alternative explanation (via personality similarity), illuminating the differential impact of perceived value similarity versus personality similarity on social attraction. Value similarity is the missing link in explaining the musical bonding phenomenon, which seems to hold for Western and non-Western samples and in experimental and natural settings.

Reconceptualizing individual differences in self-enhancement bias: an interpersonal approach.

Self-enhancement bias has been studied from 2 perspectives: L. Festinger's (1954) social comparison theory (self-enhancers perceive themselves more positively than they perceive others) and G. W. Allport's (1937) self-insight theory (self-enhancers perceive themselves more positively than they are perceived by others). These 2 perspectives are theoretically and empirically distinct, and the failure to recognize their differences has led to a protracted debate. A new interpersonal approach to self-enhancement decomposes self-perception into 3 components: perceiver effect, target effect, and unique self-perception. Both theoretical derivations and an illustrative study suggest that this resulting measure of self-enhancement is less confounded by unwanted components of interpersonal perception than previous social comparison and self-insight measures. Findings help reconcile conflicting views about whether self-enhancement is adaptive or maladaptive.