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.

Family still matters: Human social motivation across 42 countries during a global pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic social changes for many people, including separation from friends and coworkers, enforced close contact with family, and reductions in mobility. Here we assess the extent to which people's evolutionarily-relevant basic motivations and goals-fundamental social motives such as Affiliation and Kin Care-might have been affected. To address this question, we gathered data on fundamental social motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) across two waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which data were gathered both before and during the pandemic (pre-pandemic wave: 32 countries, N = 8998; 3302 male, 5585 female; M age  = 24.43, SD = 7.91; mid-pandemic wave: 29 countries, N = 6917; 2249 male, 4218 female; M age  = 28.59, SD = 11.31). Samples include data collected online (e.g., Prolific, MTurk), at universities, and via community sampling. We found that Disease Avoidance motivation was substantially higher during the pandemic, and that most of the other fundamental social motives showed small, yet significant, differences across waves. Most sensibly, concern with caring for one's children was higher during the pandemic, and concerns with Mate Seeking and Status were lower. Earlier findings showing the prioritization of family motives over mating motives (and even over Disease Avoidance motives) were replicated during the pandemic. Finally, well-being remained positively associated with family-related motives and negatively associated with mating motives during the pandemic, as in the pre-pandemic samples. Our results provide further evidence for the robust primacy of family-related motivations even during this unique disruption of social life.

Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves.

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives-self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and kin care-are high in fitness relevance and everyday salience, yet understudied cross-culturally. Here, we gathered data on these motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) in two cross-sectional waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which data were gathered in both waves. Wave 1 was collected from mid-2016 through late 2019 (32 countries, N = 8,998; 3,302 male, 5,585 female; Mage = 24.43, SD = 7.91). Wave 2 was collected from April through November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic (29 countries, N = 6,917; 2,249 male, 4,218 female; Mage = 28.59, SD = 11.31). These data can be used to assess differences and similarities in people's fundamental social motives both across and within cultures, at different time points, and in relation to other commonly studied cultural indicators and outcomes.

Harmony and Aversion in the Face of a Pandemic.

While the survival function of culture against infectious disease has been investigated, little is known about its psychological processes under the real-world threat of infection. Here, we compare the subjective COVID-19-related symptoms of Japanese and French adults during the spring of 2021. We tested two regression models describing the downregulation of symptoms by germ aversion, and by interdependent happiness, together with relational mobility and demographics. We regard germ aversion as an individualized fending-off process marked by discomfort with the general other in the face of possible infection. We regard interdependent happiness as a relational safeguarding process against possible infection. Results suggest that the effect of germ aversion differed across nations, negatively explaining symptoms in Japan but not in France, and that the effect of interdependent happiness was shared. A possible psychological mechanism whereby collectivist culture suppresses infection in the face of the pandemic is discussed.

Family Matters: Rethinking the Psychology of Human Social Motivation.

What motives do people prioritize in their social lives? Historically, social psychologists, especially those adopting an evolutionary perspective, have devoted a great deal of research attention to sexual attraction and romantic-partner choice (mate seeking). Research on long-term familial bonds (mate retention and kin care) has been less thoroughly connected to relevant comparative and evolutionary work on other species, and in the case of kin care, these bonds have been less well researched. Examining varied sources of data from 27 societies around the world, we found that people generally view familial motives as primary in importance and mate-seeking motives as relatively low in importance. Compared with other groups, college students, single people, and men place relatively higher emphasis on mate seeking, but even those samples rated kin-care motives as more important. Furthermore, motives linked to long-term familial bonds are positively associated with psychological well-being, but mate-seeking motives are associated with anxiety and depression. We address theoretical and empirical reasons why there has been extensive research on mate seeking and why people prioritize goals related to long-term familial bonds over mating goals. Reallocating relatively greater research effort toward long-term familial relationships would likely yield many interesting new findings relevant to everyday people's highest social priorities.

Differences in Compassion, Well-being, and Social Anxiety between Japan and the USA.

Research has shown that self-compassion can improve individual well-being in many cultures; however, little research has examined cultural differences regarding compassion for others and individual well-being. Cross-cultural research has indicated that interdependent happiness and Taijin Kyofusho (TKS) (other-focused social anxiety) are aspects of well-being and psychopathology, respectively, related to interdependent (i.e., collectivistic) cultures such as Japan. First, we hypothesized that self-compassion would foster greater positive affect and satisfaction with life in the US than in Japan. Our second hypothesis was that the compassion for others would be association with greater interdependent happiness, and with less TKS symptoms in Japan than in the US. Through a web-based survey of Japanese and American adults, we found that self-compassion was related to positive and negative affect, SAD and TKS symptoms, and well-being in both countries. Compassion for others was found to be associated with increased positive affect and decreased TKS symptoms across both cultures. Simple slope tests revealed that self-compassion had a stronger relation with positive affect among U.S. adults than their Japanese counterparts, whereas compassion for others was related to interdependent happiness only in Japan. These findings suggest that the link between compassion, well-being, and psychopathology might be universal, although the effects of two types of compassion have different patterns between the two cultures.

Survey of the effects of internet usage on the happiness of Japanese university students.

BACKGROUND: Besides research on psychiatric diseases related to problematic Internet use (PIU), a growing number of studies focus on the impact of Internet on subjective well-being (SWB). However, in previous studies on the relationship between PIU and SWB, there is little data for Japanese people specifically, and there is a lack of consideration for differences in perception of happiness due to cultural differences. Therefore, we aimed to clarify how happiness is interdependent on PIU measures, with a focus on how the concept of happiness is interpreted among Japanese people, and specifically among Japanese university students. METHODS: A paper-based survey was conducted with 1258 Japanese university students. Respondents were asked to fill out self-report scales regarding their happiness using the Interdependent Happiness Scale (IHS). The relationship between IHS and Internet use (Japanese version of the Internet addiction test, JIAT), use of social networking services, as well as social function and sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, PSQI) were sought using multiple regression analyses. RESULTS: Based on multiple regression analyses, the following factors related positively to IHS: female gender and the number of Twitter followers. Conversely, the following factors related negatively to IHS: poor sleep, high- PIU, and the number of times the subject skipped a whole day of school. CONCLUSIONS: It was shown that there was a significant negative correlation between Japanese youths' happiness and PIU. Since epidemiological research on happiness that reflects the cultural background is still scarce, we believe future studies shall accumulate similar evidence in this regard.

Cross-cultural invariance of NPI-13: Entitlement as culturally specific, leadership and grandiosity as culturally universal.

The current study explores the problem with the lack of measurement invariance for the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) by addressing two issues: conceptual heterogeneity of narcissism and methodological issues related to the binary character of data. We examine the measurement invariance of the 13-item version of the NPI in three populations in Japan, Poland and the UK. Analyses revealed that leadership/authority and grandiose exhibitionism dimensions of the NPI were cross-culturally invariant, while entitlement/exploitativeness was culturally specific. Therefore, we proposed NPI-9 as indicating scalar invariance, and we examined the pattern of correlations between NPI-9 and other variables across three countries. The results suggest that NPI-9 is valid brief scale measuring general levels of narcissism in cross-cultural studies, while the NPI-13 remains suitable for research within specific countries.

Farming cultivates a community-level shared culture through collective activities: Examining contextual effects with multilevel analyses.

It has been suggested that the well-known cultural differences in interdependence across cultures are linked to economic activities, such as farming. However, the underlying processes of how such psychological tendencies are shared among people in a society has not been sufficiently investigated. This article addresses the multilevel processes of how psychological characteristics are shared among people. We focus on collective activities that go beyond the individual's personal economic activities. Multilevel analyses on a large-scale survey (residents of Japanese communities, N = 7,295) of 408 communities, along with a follow-up survey (N = 1,714) of 86 communities, suggested that "concern for reputation" (one aspect of interdependence) was more prevalent in farming communities than in nonfarming communities, not only for farmers, but also for nonfarmers. Furthermore, multilevel mediational analyses suggested that, (a) the proportion of farmers in a community was positively associated with participation in collective activities (e.g., maintenance of community infrastructure) by both farmers and nonfarmers, and (b) this is in turn associated with increased levels of concern for reputation at the community level. Community-level longitudinal analyses revealed that collective activities promoted residents' concern for reputation about two years later. These findings support our "collective activity" hypothesis, and demonstrate that interdependence can be constructed through social interaction via community activities. Fishing was associated with high levels of self-esteem and risk avoidance, and these effects were found only at the individual level. We conclude that economic activities affect social interaction, which in turn affects the multilevel processes of cultural emergence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Cross-cultural invariances in the architecture of shame.

Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action's direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the magnitude of devaluation expressed by audiences in response to those acts. Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology. We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean r = +0.84). The fact that the same pattern is encountered in such mutually remote communities suggests that shame's match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by selection and not a product of cultural contact or convergent cultural evolution.

Invariances in the architecture of pride across small-scale societies.

Becoming valuable to fellow group members so that one would attract assistance in times of need is a major adaptive problem. To solve it, the individual needs a predictive map of the degree to which others value different acts so that, in choosing how to act, the payoff arising from others' valuation of a potential action (e.g., showing bandmates that one is a skilled forager by pursuing a hard-to-acquire prey item) can be added to the direct payoff of the action (e.g., gaining the nutrients of the prey captured). The pride system seems to incorporate all of the elements necessary to solve this adaptive problem. Importantly, data from western(-ized), educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies indicate close quantitative correspondences between pride and the valuations of audiences. Do those results generalize beyond industrial mass societies? To find out, we conducted an experiment among 567 participants in 10 small-scale societies scattered across Central and South America, Africa, and Asia: (i) Bosawás Reserve, Nicaragua; (ii) Cotopaxi, Ecuador; (iii) Drâa-Tafilalet, Morocco; (iv) Enugu, Nigeria; (v) Le Morne, Mauritius; (vi) La Gaulette, Mauritius; (vii) Tuva, Russia; (viii) Shaanxi and Henan, China; (ix) farming communities in Japan; and (x) fishing communities in Japan. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, pride in each community closely tracked the valuation of audiences locally (mean r = +0.66) and even across communities (mean r = +0.29). This suggests that the pride system not only develops the same functional architecture everywhere but also operates with a substantial degree of universality in its content.

Associations between problematic Internet use and psychiatric symptoms among university students in Japan.

AIM: Research on the adverse effects of Internet use has gained importance recently. However, there is currently insufficient data on Japanese young adults' Internet use, so we conducted a survey targeting Japanese university students to research problematic Internet use (PIU). We also investigated the relationship between PIU and multiple psychiatric symptoms. METHODS: A paper-based survey was conducted at five universities in Japan. Respondents were asked to fill out self-report scales regarding their Internet dependency using the Internet Addiction Test (IAT). Sleep quality, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tendency, depression, and anxiety symptom data were also collected based on respective self-reports. RESULTS: There were 1336 responses and 1258 were included in the analysis. The mean IAT score (± SD) was 37.87 ± 12.59; and 38.2% of participants were classified as PIU, and 61.8% as non-PIU. The trend level for young women showed that they were more likely to be classified as PIU than young men (40.6% and 35.2% respectively, P = 0.05). Compared to the non-PIU group, the PIU group used the Internet longer (P < 0.001), had significantly lower sleep quality (P < 0.001), had stronger ADHD tendencies (P < 0.001), had higher Depression scores (P < 0.001), and had higher Trait-Anxiety scores (P < 0.001). Based on multiple logistic regression analyses, the factors that contributed to an increased risk of PIU were: being female (odds ratio [OR] = 1.52), being older (OR = 1.17), having poor sleep quality (OR = 1.52), having ADHD tendencies (OR = 2.70), having depression (OR = 2.24), and having anxiety tendencies (OR = 1.43). CONCLUSION: We found a high PIU prevalence among Japanese young adults. The factors that predicted PIU were: female sex, older age, poor sleep quality, ADHD tendencies, depression, and anxiety.

Do You Always Choose What You Like? Subtle Social Cues Increase Preference-Choice Consistency among Japanese But Not among Americans.

Previous research has suggested that stability of self-concept differs across cultures: in North American cultural contexts, people's self-concept is stable across social contexts, whereas in Japan, different self-concepts are activated within specific social contexts. We examined the implications of this cultural difference for preference-choice consistency, which is people's tendency to make choices that are consistent with their preferences. We found that Japanese were less likely than Americans to choose items that they liked the most, showing preference-choice inconsistency. We also investigated the conditions in which Japanese might exhibit greater preference-choice consistency. Consistent with research showing that in Japanese culture, the self is primarily conceptualized and activated by social contexts, we found that subtle social cues (e.g., schematic representations of human faces) increased preference-choice consistency among Japanese, but not among Americans. These findings highlight that choices do not reveal preferences to the same extent in all cultures, and that the extent to which choices reveal preferences depends on the social context.

To Accept One's Fate or Be Its Master: Culture, Control, and Workplace Choice.

Utilizing three student (Study 1) and non-student samples (Study 2), we examined cultural differences in workplace choice for North Americans, Germans, and Japanese. We focused on the desire for control as a potential mediator (i.e., the underlying mechanism) to explain cultural differences in this important life decision. Given culturally divergent embodiments of independent vs. interdependent models of agency, we expected and found that, compared to North Americans and Germans, Japanese were more likely to prefer a workplace with a payment system that maintains social order rather than one that rewards individual achievement. Furthermore, we found that Japanese tend to give greater consideration to family opinions in their choice of workplace. As predicted, desire for control (i.e., the motivation to have control over various events) was stronger for North Americans and Germans than Japanese, and explained cultural differences in choice of workplace.

Cultural shaping of neural responses: Feedback-related potentials vary with self-construal and face priming.

Previous work shows that when an image of a face is presented immediately prior to each trial of a speeded cognitive task (face-priming), the error-related negativity (ERN) is upregulated for Asians, but it is downregulated for Caucasians. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that images of "generalized other" vary cross-culturally such that they evoke anxiety for Asians, whereas they serve as safety cues for Caucasians. Here, we tested whether the cross-cultural variation in the face-priming effect would be observed in a gambling paradigm. Caucasian Americans, Asian Americans, and Asian sojourners were exposed to a brief flash of a schematic face during a gamble. For Asian Americans, face-priming resulted in significant increases of both negative-going deflection of ERP upon negative feedback (feedback-related negativity [FRN]) and positive-going deflection of ERP upon positive feedback (feedback-related positivity [FRP]). For Caucasian Americans, face-priming showed a significant reversal, decreasing both FRN and FRP. The cultural difference in the face-priming effect in FRN and FRP was partially mediated by interdependent self-construal. Curiously, Asian sojourners showed a pattern similar to the one for Caucasian Americans. Our findings suggest that culture shapes neural pathways in both systematic and highly dynamic fashion.

Cultural variations in global versus local processing: a developmental perspective.

We conducted 3 studies to explore cultural differences in global versus local processing and their developmental trajectories. In Study 1 (N = 363), we found that Japanese college students were less globally oriented in their processing than American or Argentine participants. We replicated this effect in Study 2 (N = 1,843) using a nationally representative sample of Japanese and American adults ages 20 to 69, and found further that adults in both cultures became more globally oriented with age. In Study 3 (N = 133), we investigated the developmental course of the cultural difference using Japanese and American children, and found it was evident by 4 years of age. Cultural variations in global versus local processing emerge by early childhood, and remain throughout adulthood. At the same time, both Japanese and Americans become increasingly global processors with age.

Living in the tide of change: explaining Japanese subjective health from the socio-demographic change.

Today, countries around the world are caught in the tide of change toward Gesellshaft, or individualistic socio-demographic condition. Recent investigations in Japan have suggested negative impacts of change on emotional and motivational aspects of the Japanese self (Norasakkunkit et al., 2012; Ogihara and Uchida, 2014). Building on previous findings, in Study 1, we measured socio-demographic change toward individualistic societal condition during 1990-2010-two decades marked by great economic recession-at the levels of prefecture and city using archival data. In Study 2, we tested whether Japanese adults' general health, satisfaction with life, self-esteem, and perceived social support were negatively predicted by the change using social survey. Results of hierarchical linear modeling showed small but unique negative effects of the change on several health measures, suggesting that this change had an impact on health, above and beyond individual personality traits, and demographics. Additionally, interdependent happiness, the type of cultural happiness grounded in interdependence of the self (Hitokoto and Uchida, 2014), showed an independent positive relationship with all aspects of health examined. Implications for health studies in changing socio-demographic condition are discussed in the context of Japanese society after economic crisis.

Psychological impact of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 on general hospital workers in Kobe.

AIMS: In order for hospitals to work efficiently in a pandemic, it is important to know how a pandemic affects the hospital staff. The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychological impact of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 on hospital workers and how it was affected by the characteristics of the hospital, gender, age, job and work environment. METHODS: In late June 2009, soon after the pandemic had ended in Kobe city, Japan, a questionnaire was distributed consisting of questions on sociodemographic characteristics, 19 stress-related questions and the Impact of Event Scale (IES) to all 3635 employees at three core general hospitals in Kobe. Exploratory factor analysis was applied to the 19 stress-related questions, and this produced four factors for evaluation (anxiety about infection, exhaustion, workload, and feeling of being protected). Multiple regression models were used to evaluate the association of personal characteristics with each score of the four factors and the IES. RESULTS: Valid answers were received from 1625 employees. Workers at a hospital with intense liaison psychiatric services felt less psychological impact. Workers at a hospital that provided staff with information about the pandemic less frequently, felt unprotected. Workers in work environments that had a high risk of infection felt more anxious and more exhausted. The total IES score was higher in workers in high-risk work environments. CONCLUSIONS: It is important for hospitals to protect hospital workers during a pandemic and to rapidly share information about the pandemic. Liaison psychiatric services can help to reduce the impact of the pandemic on hospital workers.

Prevention of mothers' mental illness deterioration: can their attitudes toward self-care and childcare prevent mental deterioration?

BACKGROUND: Women with severe mental illness experience many kinds of problems during childcare and have a high risk of relapse. Previous studies have not revealed methods for preventing deterioration of mothers' illness. In this study, we retrospectively investigated mothers with severe mental illness, and we attempted to identify characteristics of mothers whose condition did not deteriorate and who did not require hospitalization during childcare. METHODS: Data were collected from a self-administered questionnaire filled out by female outpatients who had experienced childcare and were diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar affective disorder or depression with psychotic symptoms. The questionnaire asked about attitudes toward childcare during the first three years following the first childbirth. It was composed of six sections on A) living situation, B) psychiatric medication, C) sleep, D) subjective symptoms of deterioration, E) resting time, and F) advice for other mothers with mental illness. The subjects were split into two groups: those that were admitted to a hospital within three years following the first childbirth (hospital group, n=16) and those that were not hospitalized (non-hospital group, n=19). RESULTS: The two groups showed no significant differences in their responses to the questions in sections A-E of the questionnaire. In section F, the non-hospital group wrote significantly more comments than the hospital group. The non-hospital group described concrete ways for taking care of their mental health, while the hospital group did not. DISCUSSION: Our results suggest that whether or not mothers need admission during childcare depends on their assertiveness and ability to communicate.