An international team of researchers has revealed that living and thriving in the countries deemed to be the happiest is harder than previously thought. People residing in these territories would experience a poor sense of well-being because of the social pressure around bliss.
- Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Austria also feature in the top 10 happiest countries in the world.
- Living and being filled with happiness in these countries would not always be beneficial because privileging the value of positive emotions could paradoxically harm well-being.
Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and the Netherlands. These five countries are the happiest in the world, according to the ranking of the World Happiness Report 2021 unveiled last March. But do their inhabitants really see life in pink? This is the question posed by Brock Bastian, professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne (Australia), and Egon Dejonckheere, professor at the University of Tilburg (Netherlands). To find out for sure, they decided to carry out a study on well-being with researchers from all over the world. The results of their work have been published in the journal Scientific Reports February 17.
“Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. While this societal engagement seems laudable, overemphasizing positivity can create an unattainable emotional norm that ironically undermines well-being. individual”, wrote the authors in the research. To carry out their study, the scientists asked 7,443 people from 40 countries about their emotional well-being, satisfaction with their life (cognitive well-being) and mood disorders (clinical well-being). ). They then looked at how these responses differed based on countries’ happiness ratings.
Social pressure to be happy proves to be detrimental to mental well-being
According to the results, the pressure people feel to be happy is associated with poor well-being in countries with higher happiness rates. Clearly, when people report feeling pressure to be happy and not to be sad, they tend to have mental health deficits, explained Brock Bastian and Egon Dejonckheere in a media post. The Conversation. Thus, these adults are less satisfied with their life, experience more negative emotions and show higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress.
“Our results underscore the link between social emotion ratings and individual well-being, and suggest that high national levels of happiness may have downsides for some,” such as people who already feel high pressure to keep their spirits up, the researchers said.
“On a personal level, expressing happiness is a good thing. But, as other research has shown, sometimes it’s good to be sensitive to how our expression of positive emotions can affect others. S ‘it’s good to show happiness and positivity in our social interactions, it’s also good to know when to be more discreet, and thus avoid alienating those who may not share our joy of the moment”developed the authors of the work.
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