Oral Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Mental Well-Being: Recent Findings and Implications (#342)

Mohsen Joshanloo 1
  1. Keimyung University, Daegu, DAEGU, South Korea

Global, cross-cultural, and national well-being research has been dominated by a focus on life satisfaction. To challenge this one-sided approach, I will present new findings from the factor analysis of a large set of national-level variables that measure various aspects of well-being. These findings demonstrate that various well-being variables form independent dimensions that have differential associations with external variables and lead to different country rankings. I will also present new findings on the lay conceptualizations of well-being across countries. These findings highlight the importance of taking into account other aspects of national well-being that should be considered in addition to life satisfaction in global, cross-cultural, and national research. To further illustrate the necessity of this multi-dimensional approach, I will summarize evidence from studies using my new index of eudaimonic well-being across 166 countries and will put forward emerging findings on the associations between well-being dimensions and various ecological and cultural characteristics. Together, these findings suggest that ignoring the plurality of well-being dimensions may present a distorted picture of the status of well-being in many countries. The studies I review point to a new generation of research on the relationship between culture and well-being.