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Stumbling on Happiness, II: Are Asians less happy?
Asian culture does not emphasize the importance of personal happiness as much as European culture does, and thus Asian Americans believe that they are generally less happy than their European American counterparts. In one study, volunteers carried handheld computers everywhere they went for a week and recorded how they were feeling when the computer beeped at random intervals throughout the day. These reports showed that the Asian American volunteers were slightly happier than the European American volunteers. But when the volunteers were asked to remember how they had felt that week, the Asian American volunteers reported that they had felt less happy and not more.
The above passage is from Daniel Gilbert's excellent Stumbling on Happiness. Here is my earlier post on the book. Hispanics, by the way, remembered feeling happier than they had been in the moment. One implication is that you cannot completely trust happiness studies based on self-reported data.
By the way: Have you figured out what is the secret but unpalatable way of making better life decisions?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 6, 2006 at 04:58 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Listening to your elders?
Posted by: Matt McIntosh at May 6, 2006 7:47:57 AM
George Constanza: "do the opposite of what your instincts tell you to do"
Posted by: Leo at May 6, 2006 9:42:30 AM
Have you figured out what is the secret but unpalatable way of making better life decisions?
Don't second-guess decisions after you make them?
Posted by: neil at May 6, 2006 11:33:42 AM
If I'm standing on the utility curve, shouldn't I just walk in the direction of greatest incline? That sounds like a workout that'll lead to happiness.
Posted by: Lee at May 6, 2006 12:32:35 PM
"One implication is that you cannot completely trust happiness studies based on self-reported data."
True, but it depends what you use 'em for. Cross-cultural level comparisons are suspect, to be sure - but intra-cultural level comparisons, cross-cultural time trends and regressions that control for fixed effects are likely to be much less so.
Posted by: conchis at May 6, 2006 12:38:21 PM
Outsource decisionmaking about yourself to your spouse?
Posted by: RSaunders at May 6, 2006 1:45:59 PM
Maybe Gilbert's book beat them to the punch and covers more ground,
but Krueger and Kahnemann have the lead article in the latests Journal
of Economic Perspectives that drives home the point about remembered
happiness not necessarily equaling experienced happiness. They note a
"peak-end rule," people tend to be strongly influenced by the most
intense moment of an experience and how it ended. I can imagine
some good evolutionary reasons why that might be a good way for
memory to function.
You say that we cannot rely on "reported happiness." But which
report can we not rely on? While the memory may not in some sense
"accurately reflect" the experience, it also warns that the
experience may not be remembered as we think it will be, and the
memory will be longer lasting. So, I may really enjoy consuming
this piece of trash, but afterwards I may regret that I did so and
be unhappy about it.
I have said it before and will say it again: the most reliable of
these studies are of panels of specific people, even taking into
account these reported "distortions." The least reliable or
meaningful are these cross-cultural cross-section ones.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 6, 2006 5:28:25 PM
If we assume that the Asian volunteers are more optimistic than the other groups studied, this would explain the dilemma to an extent. An optimist is forward looking by nature. Therefore, today has greater value than yesterday and tomorrow (although not mentioned here) is likely to 'feel' better today than today ‘feels’.
The reverse tends to be the case with depressed people. The past is not as bad as it was 'expected' to be and the future doesn't look all that great.
Question: Is the incidence of depression less in Asian Culture?
I’d be a lot happier today and tomorrow if I could see everything that I was typing on this blog.
Posted by: Chairman Mao at May 6, 2006 7:31:24 PM
Question: Is the incidence of depression less in Asian Culture?
No actual numeric basis for this, but my sense is that it's rather higher -- you have that high suicide rate in Japan, and all those hikikomori to boot. Other Asian countries are probably somewhat different, but I suspect they cluster in that direction. Not to say that these indicia capture the incidence of depression perfectly -- I'm sure they don't -- but they are at least suggestive.
Posted by: Taeyoung at May 6, 2006 8:04:35 PM
Regarding both suicide rates and expressions regarding
happiness, one really does have to worry about social
norms. Thus, traditionally in Asia, or at least in Japan,
hara-kiri was an act of honor, not of shame as in much of
the West. The complexity of the state of mind cannot be
assumed to be one of deep depression or unhappiness, although
certainly it will often be so.
We also have the odd paradox of the Nordic countries, which
regularly score very high on these happiness ratings, but also
have high suicide rates. Are there social norms there to say
that one is happy because one is supposed to be that way? Are
there not other societies where saying one is happy will make
one look silly? Krueger and Kahnemann report American women
claiming that they are happier than French women, although
the day to day reports from French women come out ahead of those
from American women.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 6, 2006 8:32:45 PM
Taeyoung,
Good point about the high suicide rate in Japan. However, I believe that Herr Cowen’s matter referred to Asian Americans.
Depression leading to suicide must have some pathological basis. (Culture can contribute to the development of that pathology but it cannot independently lead to suicide (if a culture treats suicide as an imperative, an absolute must that the individual cannot escape, this would probably be categorized as murder).
On Nordic countries: Very often religious/cultural norms (in Christianity and other beliefs) compel people to mask their unhappiness and declare contentment. The reverse can also be true in societies that embrace victimization and/or martyrdom. Well, the survey has a flaw if people simply lie.
Posted by: Chairman Mao at May 6, 2006 9:44:12 PM
Herr Cowen,
The secret but unpalatable way of making better life decisions?
CONFRONT REALITY!!
Posted by: Chairman Mao at May 6, 2006 9:52:49 PM
"Is the incidence of depression less in Asian culture."
Well, 20 years ago Chinese people simply didn't seem to suffer from depression as people in the West did.
However, they complained of physical aches and pains which had no detectable medical cause with much
greater frequency than Europeans or North Americans. I'd be interested to see if this has changed over
the last two decades.
Posted by: Ronald Brak at May 6, 2006 11:02:11 PM
Of course if 'remembered happiness' is what motivates future behavior, then no adjustments are necessary.
Posted by: Darren at May 7, 2006 9:40:18 AM
Re:
‘Of course if 'remembered happiness' is what motivates future behavior, then no adjustments are necessary.’
You can remember happiness during time spent with a loved one who has since passed. Would that necessarily motivate future happiness?
Posted by: Chairman Mao at May 7, 2006 1:59:47 PM
In terms of suicide rates, Hungary and Finland make the Japanese appear manic.
Also, the Japanese rate, if I remember correctly, is roughly on a par with the US's.
(speaking in year-to-year averages)
Posted by: MarketFailureBoy at May 7, 2006 9:56:16 PM
Re: Marketfailureboy --
I'm pretty sure theirs is around twice ours. In raw numbers, year-to-year, we seem to be at parity, but the US has a rather larger population. See, e.g. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/FG28Dh01.html
Posted by: Taeyoung at May 8, 2006 7:28:38 AM
To the extent that suicide rates are due to a lower threshold of unhappiness, disgrace, etc necessary to make a person suicidial, then it may make sense that high suicide rates would correlate with higher reported mean happiness, since the would-be low-end outliers are more likely to have removed themselves from the sample group.
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