The Geography of Bliss

egins
All cultures have a word for happiness, and some have
many words. But does the English word “happiness” mean
the same as the French bonheur or the Spanish felicidad
or the Arabic sahaada In other words, does happiness
translate There’s some evidence that the answer is yes.
The Swiss report equal levels of happiness, whether they
take the surveys in French, German, or Italian, the country’s
three main languages.
All cultures value happiness, but not to the same degree.
East Asian countries tend to emphasize harmony and
fulfilling societal obligations rather than individual
contentment; perhaps not coincidentally, these countries
also report lower levels of happiness, what’s been called
the East Asian Happiness Gap, which sounds to me like
some sort of Chinese Grand Canyon. Then there is the
“social desirability bias.” The concern here is that people
answer the happiness surveys not from their heart but in
ways that their society would approve of. The Japanese, for
instance, are famously self-effacing, afraid to be the
proverbial nail that sticks out; they are also, relative to their
wealth, not very happy. I lived in Japan for years and never
got used to the sight of Japanese women covering their
mouths when they laughed or smiled, as if ashamed of their
glee.
We Americans, on the other hand, wear our happiness
on our sleeves and, if anything, are guilty of inflating our
contentment in order to impress. Here is what a Polish
citizen living in the United States told the writer Laura Klos