title: Lay Definitions of Happiness across Nations: The Primacy of Inner Harmony and Relational Connectedness.
abstract: In well-being research the term happiness is often used as synonymous with life satisfaction. However, little is known about lay people's understanding of happiness. Building on the available literature, this study explored lay definitions of happiness across nations and cultural dimensions, analyzing their components and relationship with participants' demographic features. Participants were 2799 adults (age range = 30-60, 50% women) living in urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, and United States. They completed the Eudaimonic and Hedonic Happiness Investigation (EHHI), reporting, among other information, their own definition of happiness. Answers comprised definitions referring to a broad range of life domains, covering both the contextual-social sphere and the psychological sphere. Across countries and with little variation by age and gender, inner harmony predominated among psychological definitions, and family and social relationships among contextual definitions. Whereas relationships are widely acknowledged as basic happiness components, inner harmony is substantially neglected. Nevertheless, its cross-national primacy, together with relations, is consistent with the view of an ontological interconnectedness characterizing living systems, shared by several conceptual frameworks across disciplines and cultures. At the methodological level, these findings suggest the potential of a bottom-up, mixed method approach to contextualize psychological dimensions within culture and lay understanding.
authors: Department of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, University of Milano Milan, Italy.
authors: Antonella
authors: A
authors: Delle Fave
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Rijeka Rijeka, Croatia.
authors: Ingrid
authors: I
authors: Brdar
authors: Africa Unit for Transdisciplinary Health Research, North-West University Potchefstroom, South Africa.
authors: Marié P
authors: MP
authors: Wissing
authors: School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, University of São Paulo São Paulo, Brazil.
authors: Ulisses
authors: U
authors: Araujo
authors: Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad De Palermo Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors: Alejandro
authors: A
authors: Castro Solano
authors: Department of Applied Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Minho Braga, Portugal.
authors: Teresa
authors: T
authors: Freire
authors: Estudios Sobre Equidad y Genero and FES-Iztacala, Unidad de Investigación Interdisciplinaria en Ciencias de la Salud y la Educación, Proyecto Aprendizaje Humano, Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México Cuevarnaca, Mexico.
authors: María Del Rocío
authors: Mdel R
authors: Hernández-Pozo
authors: School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand.
authors: Paul
authors: P
authors: Jose
authors: Institute of Mental Health, Semmelweis University Budapest, Hungary.
authors: Tamás
authors: T
authors: Martos
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Oslo Oslo, Norway.
authors: Hilde E
authors: HE
authors: Nafstad
authors: Department of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University Claremont, CA, USA.
authors: Jeanne
authors: J
authors: Nakamura
authors: Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi New Delhi, India.
authors: Kamlesh
authors: K
authors: Singh
authors: Anugraha Institute of Social Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University Dindigul, India.
authors: Lawrence
authors: L
authors: Soosai-Nathan
keywords: adulthood; culture; happiness; inner harmony; interconnectedness; lay definitions; relationships