Introduction to a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Well-Being: Combining Life Satisfaction and Interdependent Happiness Across 49 Different Cultures

Abstract How can one conclude that well-being is higher in country A than B, when being measured according to the way people think about well-being? We address this issue by proposing a new culturally sensitive method comparing societal levels of well-being. support our reasoning with data on life satisfaction and interdependent happiness focusing individual family, collected mostly from students, across forty-nine countries. demonstrate relative idealization two types varies cultural contexts are associated different models selfhood. Furthermore, we show rankings based tend underestimate contribution happiness. introduce for calculating well-being, examine its construct validity testing associations experience emotions individualism-collectivism. This approach represents slight, yet important improvement measuring