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.

Catching up with wonderful women: The women-are-wonderful effect is smaller in more gender egalitarian societies.

Inequalities between men and women are common and well-documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies-there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women-are-wonderful effect-that women are evaluated more positively than men overall-is also common. Cross-cultural studies on gender equality reveal that the more gender egalitarian the society is, the less prevalent explicit gender stereotypes are. Yet, because self-reported gender stereotypes may differ from implicit attitudes towards each gender, we reanalysed data collected across 44 cultures, and (a) confirmed that societal gender egalitarianism reduces the women-are-wonderful effect when it is measured more implicitly (i.e. rating the personality of men and women presented in images) and (b) documented that the social perception of men benefits more from gender egalitarianism than that of women.

Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgments of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals.

Smiling individuals are usually perceived more favorably than non-smiling ones-they are judged as happier, more attractive, competent, and friendly. These seemingly clear and obvious consequences of smiling are assumed to be culturally universal, however most of the psychological research is carried out in WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) and the influence of culture on social perception of nonverbal behavior is still understudied. Here we show that a smiling individual may be judged as less intelligent than the same non-smiling individual in cultures low on the GLOBE's uncertainty avoidance dimension. Furthermore, we show that corruption at the societal level may undermine the prosocial perception of smiling-in societies with high corruption indicators, trust toward smiling individuals is reduced. This research fosters understanding of the cultural framework surrounding nonverbal communication processes and reveals that in some cultures smiling may lead to negative attributions.

[Stress and aging. A counter-cultural development of locus of control and coping behavior in the elderly]. / Stress et vieillissement. Un développement contre-culturel du lieu de contrôle et des stratégies d'adaptation chez les sujets âgés.

Large international comparative surveys showed that study of intra-cultural differences and of their modifications with aging could be a fertile way to understand the influence of culture on psychological processes. People who attribute what happens to them to internal and controllable causes use more coping strategies focused on the problem than people who put forward external causes. Results obtained on child and adult in occidental societies showed dominant tendencies towards the norm of internality and coping focused on problem solving. We assumed the converse hypothesis of a decreasing belief in the internal control and a recentering coping behavior on emotional regulation in the elderly, which results in an increasing maladjustment to dominant intracultural tendencies. We studied 215 French elderly subjects with a French scale assessing the type l locus of control (internal versus external) through 7 sources of reinforcement and with the French validation of the Vitaliano et al. coping scale assessing the strategies of adaptation (focused on problem solving versus on emotional control). The results showed that advancing age, contrary to the main intracultural injunctions, was linked to an increasing belief in external factors regulating life events and with an emotion focused coping of avoidance type when facing a recent stress. Unlike to the continuous emphasis, in our individualistic cultures, on the adaptation of the world to the self involving problem solving, it is the adaptation of the self to the world by managing the feelings, characteristic of collectivist cultures, which seems gradually to prevail during aging and could contribute to difficulties in adjustment of the elderly.