Measuring Happiness Can Be A Misery: Beyond the World Happiness Report

Can we measure how happy big groups of people are? The World Happiness Report tries to do exactly that – for entire nations! It is like a big mood check for countries. The WHR is a yearly ranking that looks at how happy people are around the world based on factors like income, social support, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. Basically, it tries to measure how satisfied and content people feel in different countries, giving us a snapshot of global well-being.

The challenge in a ranking like this is that happiness is probably one of the least understood and most sought-after emotions and experiences in human life. What does it mean to be happy? How do you know that you are doing well? Turns out there is no universal definition for this pleasant emotion. 
Even people from countries that rank highest in the WHR are wondering how they made it to the top, like the Finnish-American professor of sociology, Jukka Savolainen (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/04/finland-happiness-lagom-hygge.html). Savolainen suspects his compatriots evaluate their lives and their life expectations in such a way that their actual life circumstances approximate their highest expectations. Happiness - by this definition - means that there is only a small gap between what people look for in life and what they actually find. 

However, research consistently shows that different cultures around the world have unique concepts of well-being and happiness. While it is probably safe to assume that every human in any society has a desire to be happy, studies suggest that we aren’t completely alike in our happiness and that our interpretation of happiness may very well be dependent on our cultural contexts. As a result, this would affect how countries rank on the WHR. 

You'll find more on this topic here: https://theculturemastery.com/2016/06/24/why-people-around-the-world-define-happiness-and-well-being-differently/ 

Check out the 2024 edition of the World Happiness Report: https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2024/WHR+24.pdf 

𝙏𝙬𝙤 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙨 – 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝘾𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨 is the world’s #1 show on the business of culture and the culture of business. Christian Höferle and Brett Parry ponder culture in short bursts and deep dives, featuring your questions and comments related to culture, business, and personal growth.

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more great content: https://www.youtube.com/@TwoChapsManyCultures

Visit https://theculturemastery.com/ for more information about the skills for working in a global context.

The music on this episode is provided courtesy of Sepalot.
“Duum Diip” - Artist: Sepalot - Label: Eskapaden - Copyright control

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do I look happy to you?
Am I a really happy camperright now?
Or am I just putting on a faceand make you believe that this
is what happiness is?
Well, maybe we'll find out inthis episode where we talk about
the World Happiness Reportapparently ranking the happiness

(00:20):
levels of nations around theglobe.
So are they the happiest?
And did your country make itinto the top 10?
And what does that even mean?
Let's find out.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to 2Chap's Many Cultures.
In an increasingly globallyconnected world, it is vital to
possess the essential skills ofcultural intelligence.
Listen along as we present thetopics, tips and strategies you
can use to develop the power ofcultural understanding in your
personal and professional life.

(00:54):
Here are your hosts ChristianHuffala and Brett Parry.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Welcome back to a happy episode of Two Chaps, many
Cultures, or will it be?
Yes?
Well, you'll make us happy ifyou subscribe to our channel,
listen to our podcast, hit thatbell and welcome back to the
show where too much culture isbarely enough and perhaps too
much happiness is too much, ortoo much sadness.

(01:21):
How do we work that out?
Well, there are rankings,apparently.
Tell us how happy people are.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
And where do we?

Speaker 3 (01:28):
find those rankings mate.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
They are on a website .
I think they're called theWorld Happiness Report, where
nations compete in the HappinessOlympics, I guess it's the.
Olympics, gold medals and bronzeand silver medals, or something
I don't want to make light ofthis.
There is, and this is why we'retalking about this.

(01:51):
This is why we dedicate anepisode to this, because it is
heavily publicized around theworld.
The World Happiness Reportmakes it into news headlines.
It is reported all over, atleast in the media that Brett
and I consume, and usually thehighest ranking countries in

(02:12):
that world happiness report arethen looked at more vigorously.
What is it about these landsthat make people say they are
happy, lands that make peoplesay they are happy?
And this is where my thoughtprocess begins, or our thought
process begins and we wonder howdo you define this happiness,

(02:35):
and is it the same in all thesecountries?
And how do these countries endup on the top and others in
midfield and others?
We don't want to talk aboutthem.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
I find it.
Well, as Christian says, we area little skeptical, not
skeptical.
I guess we are intrigued bythese rankings because we want
to look behind the curtain alittle bit, we want to
understand what drives them,what is the modality of the
questions and things like that.
And perhaps we're not the onlyones, because actually the

(03:11):
people that ended, the countriesthat ended up on top of this
list, they seem to be the mostskeptical.
They're looking at that andgoing oh, you're calling us the
happiest in the world,interesting.
You're calling us the happiestin the world Interesting.
Well, we could tell you thereasons why perhaps we're
contented, perhaps why we don'tactually aspire to much more

(03:32):
than what we've got, but happy.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
And maybe if you're a visitor, they point out.
If you're a visitor to theselands, these Nordic lands, let's
talk about these.
Finland hit the top, denmarkhits the top, usually these
countries that are in the farnorth of the globe, and if you
go to these countries, if youwalked around, probably you
wouldn't see people dancing onthe streets.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Probably not no no.
And I think the geographiclocation is probably not a big
factor in that either, becausethen, if that were true, then
maybe Southern Argentina andChile or Canada or Siberia would
also rank highly.
But they don't.
It's Finland, denmark, iceland,sweden occupy the top four

(04:20):
spots and usually, looking atthe past years and how that
happiness reports ranks them,they usually make up the top
five.
Somehow.
The nordic lands, right, nordiccountries no, they're not
dancing happily in the street,and so what is it?
What makes them happy?
Um, one of the articles that weboth read about, or in response

(04:44):
to the World Happiness Reportand in response to the media
craze about it, is that inrecent years, at least in the
Western world, mental health andwork-life balance took a lot of
cues from Scandinavian livingstandards.

(05:05):
The Danish concept of hyggebecame maybe a fad, maybe a
flash in the pan.
Who knows?
It might just give clues to amore balanced life, if that
works out for the individual orwithin a certain region of the
world where you live.
But is hygge really the recipefor happiness around the world?

(05:32):
Perhaps doubtful.
How do you feel about that,brett?

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Interesting that they refer to this fervent embrace
of hygge as a concept and itbecame actually a marketing tool
here in the US, where we are,which is sensibly strange If we
just put those in comparisonwith each other.
Chris and I are both in the USand this is a country that

(05:59):
perhaps arguably doesn't havethe best safety net for people
If you don't have a certainstandard of living healthcare is
tied to work your job thesekind of social structures that
are so taken for granted inthese countries.
And yet in America we have thisalmost fervent evangelical

(06:23):
atmosphere where people it'slike a marketing campaign every
day.
So they take a concept which isfrom another country, which
seems to again give themsomething they might aspire to,
this sense of comfort andcontentment, and then they put
it, then they plug it into amarketing campaign.
It becomes a commercial success.

(06:49):
But in the article in Slatewe're referencing, a lot of
those things have now beenpushed to the discount part of
the stores.
But those concepts have beenaround for generations,
centuries in those countries.
They've never gone away in thecountries that actually found
them, like in Sweden and Finlandand Denmark and places like

(07:12):
that.
But here it's flash in the pan,it's in, it's out and it's on
to the next best thing.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Often people make decisions on whether I want to
accept an assignment.
Right, I work for a globalorganization.
The company's offering me aposting abroad.
And well, they're offering me aposting in the United States,
or they're offering me a postingin I don't know France, saudi
Arabia, or in Denmark, sweden,finland.

(07:44):
What am I going to choose?
Which of these locations ismost promising?
A for my career and also for myfamily and social life?
Right?
And then if you compare Finland, denmark, according to the
World Happiness Report, againstthe US or Germany or I don't
know France, then the scaleeasily tips towards the Nordics.

(08:06):
Will that be the best decisionfor you and your loved ones?
Well, no ranking in the worldwill have the right answer for
that right.
And obviously there are certainfactors that contribute to the
ranking.
They look at income inequalityor equality.

(08:29):
They look at working hours andthey look at productivity levels
in these countries.
And they look at theeducational system how much
social climbing is possiblethrough education.
All of these are factors thatcontribute to an overall

(08:52):
happiness level in a society.
But if you ask a Finn who livesperhaps, depending on their
location, lives in darkness forseveral months throughout the
year, because the sun only comesup for maybe an hour or two
during the winter times.
Will they tell you that theyare particularly happy during

(09:14):
those periods?
Perhaps not.
If you look at the levels ofalcoholism and drug abuse in in
these parts of the world suiciderates in finland are
comparatively high then youwould ask yourself how does that
factor into the number oneranking in the world happiness

(09:36):
report?
So with all these rankings andwe had an episode about a
different type of ranking acouple of weeks ago take it with
a grain of salt.
Make sure who's doing the datacollection.
How is the data collected puttogether and emphasized?
How is the data collected puttogether and emphasized?
Because I don't know who saidit first, but I think you

(09:57):
shouldn't trust a statistic thatyou didn't falsify yourself.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
That's a good one.
Culture is really what peopleare used to in a country.
So you know, if you'reinterviewing people on a
one-on-one basis, you're gettingpeople's opinions so, and we're
not understanding those peopleand their happiness.
We're just understanding whatthey're used to.
Maybe perhaps they don't evenhave any perception of what it's

(10:24):
like in a different country andthat's why, as christian says,
you know moving, when you'recontemplating moving to a new
country, you're grasping atinformation, any information you
can get, and this is a type ofranking you might find that
comes up in your feed,especially if you happen to talk
about it in the earshot of yourphone.
But again, be very careful ofit because you know it takes a

(10:49):
lot more than that to understandwhat people are used to in a
country and what makes themhappy.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
And as you pointed out, it's often the cultural
values within a group of peoplethat defines how the group looks
at this phenomenon of happiness.
I'm not an expert on Asianlanguages I don't speak Mandarin
or Korean or Japanese but I'veread more than once that in

(11:17):
Mandarin, or in Asian societiesoverall, there is no one
terminology for that feeling ofhappiness.
There are different words fordifferent types of inner peace
or elation, or contentment, orsatisfaction or maybe even

(11:38):
excitement, so that one Englishterm that we use here happy or
happiness doesn't easilytranslate into other thought
concepts, right?
So a ranking based on thedefinition is maybe a bit
questionable given thatbackground.

(12:00):
And you look at the Nordics,whether it's Finland or Sweden
or Denmark, what many of theseNordic cultures have in common
is a cultural value of equality.
In common is a cultural valueof equality.
In Sweden they call it, and Ithink in Denmark they call it
Jantelagen, the law of Jante, afictitious individual by the

(12:22):
name of Jante.
Jante is the everyman right.
It's the law of the everyman.
Everybody has access to thesame resources, everybody has
the same rights and nobody isbetter than anyone else.
Don't you think you're special,which I think in your homeland,
australia, they call it.
What?

Speaker 3 (12:40):
Tall puppy syndrome.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
So if you're a puppy that grows too tall.
What happens to it?
You get your stem chopped off.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Ah, that must hurt that sounds painful, that sounds
painful, ah, that must hurt.
That sounds painful, thatsounds painful.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
So we, and which maybe won't surprise us then
that Australia also made it intothe top 10 of the most happy
countries, right?
So maybe it is how we, or howcultural values, teach us or
lead us to manage ourexpectations Absolutely.
Us, or lead us to manage ourexpectations Absolutely.
If you look at US culture,where it is the proverbial
country of unlimited resourcesand endless opportunity, you are
raised in a mindset of, oh,anything and everything is

(13:26):
possible.
Yes, you can become CEO one day.
You might be president.
Yes, the world is your oyster.
You have what it takes.
You're just a human being likeme and everything is possible
for you.
That is a magnificent way tomotivate people, to let them

(13:47):
aspire to higher things.
And when they don't reach thatone big thing of maybe, let's
say, the presidency of, there isonly one at a time, so there
are the chances are somewhatlimited to reach that goal.
How do you feel about it then?
Are you still going to be happy?

(14:08):
Or will that lead tofrustration because all your
aspirational goals that havebeen held up to you like the big
carrot in front of your eager,hungry mouth, you'll never reach
it?
Will that make you happy?
Will that make you disappointed.
And then compare that to, let'ssay, jantelagen, where nobody
is supposed to have more thanthe neighbor, where it's

(14:28):
socially accepted and expectedthat, yeah, we all have about
the same and we're going to beall right with that.
Those are different ways tomanage your expectations in life
and the expectations of youremotional well-being.
Does that affect the worldhappiness index?
I would venture to say likelyso.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Absolutely.
And we want to know are youhappy if your country made it to
the top?
Is that a competition in and ofitself?
Does that make you happy ifyour country is at the top, or
if it's down at the bottom?
Do you kind of share somedisappointment or don't you care
?
We would love to know.
We have an aspiration, and thatis to hear from you.

(15:14):
And so these scores you knowthey are what they are and the
commentary, of course, willinclude the commentary in the,
in the description, the link tothat commentary we're referring
to.
But, uh, we want to hear fromyou what's your perception of
happiness?
How do you see your currentstate, or the current state of
your country, or society, or orthe, even the town you live in?

(15:38):
Um, I find that alwaysinteresting, and is it an
internal thing or an externalthing?
That's the very….

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Are you responsible for the emotion or is the world
around you responsible for thatemotion?
That would be interesting tohear.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
That's right, absolutely Well, that's it.
That's all we've got to do.
We're asking you a question, ofcourse we're asking you a
question.
Of course we're leaving youhanging and uh, we're going to
um hope that you subscribe toour youtube channel and, of
course, listen to the podcast,uh, wherever you may be, if you
can't see us and usually that'sa good thing uh, subscribe and

(16:13):
um, yeah, I don't know what.
What are you going to be doingthis, uh, this week, mate,
that's going to make you happyyou mean people are happy when
they don't have to see us Allright.
Well, that might be the thing.
Maybe the Nordic countriesdon't get this show.
Maybe that's what makes themhappy.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
I'll force subscribe some of them.
I hope this episode made you abit happier or make you think
about your own level ofhappiness, or whether you want
to give it the same level ofattention as the news media or
the social media have given it.
So give it a think, let us knowin the comments.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
Subscribe, comment email us and share it with your
friends.
Make them happy.
Make them happy they.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
We won't let you down yet another episode two chaps,
many cultures.
This guy's brett, my name'schristian.
I hope we see you next episode.
Stay happy.