Krys, KubaHaas, Brian W.Igou, Eric RaymondKosiarczyk, AleksandraKocimska-Bortnowska, AgataKwiatkowska, AnnaLun, Vivian Miu-Chi2024-07-182024-07-1820231389-49781573-7780https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00588-1https://hdl.handle.net/11411/7191How 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.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessCultureHappinessWell-BeingInterdependent HappinessLife SatisfactionCultural SensitivitySelfhoodsSelf-ConstrualsCollectivismIndividualismSelfPsychologyNationsModelsArticle2-s2.0-8514490631610.1007/s10902-022-00588-16272Q160724Q1WOS:000905786000001