Işık, İdil2024-06-112024-06-112023-021389-4978https://hdl.handle.net/11411/5363https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00588-1How can one conclude that well-being is higher in country A than country B, when well-being is being measured according to the way people in country A think about well-being? We address this issue by proposing a new culturally sensitive method to comparing societal levels of well-being. We support our reasoning with data on life satisfaction and interdependent happiness focusing on individual and family, collected mostly from students, across forty-nine countries. We demonstrate that the relative idealization of the two types of well-being varies across cultural contexts and are associated with culturally different models of selfhood. Furthermore, we show that rankings of societal well-being based on life satisfaction tend to underestimate the contribution from interdependent happiness. We introduce a new culturally sensitive method for calculating societal well-being, and examine its construct validity by testing for associations with the experience of emotions and with individualism-collectivism. This new culturally sensitive approach represents a slight, yet important improvement in measuring well-being. © 2022, The Author(s).eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessCultural sensitivityCultureHappinessInterdependent happinessLife satisfactionSelf-construalsSelfhoodsWell-beingArticle10.1007/s10902-022-00588-1Q1