Happiness around the world: A combined etic-emic approach across 63 countries.

What does it mean to be happy? The vast majority of cross-cultural studies on happiness have employed a Western-origin, or "WEIRD" measure of happiness that conceptualizes it as a self-centered (or "independent"), high-arousal emotion. However, research from Eastern cultures, particularly Japan, conceptualizes happiness as including an interpersonal aspect emphasizing harmony and connectedness to others. Following a combined emic-etic approach (Cheung, van de Vijver & Leong, 2011), we assessed the cross-cultural applicability of a measure of independent happiness developed in the US (Subjective Happiness Scale; Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999) and a measure of interdependent happiness developed in Japan (Interdependent Happiness Scale; Hitokoto & Uchida, 2015), with data from 63 countries representing 7 sociocultural regions. Results indicate that the schema of independent happiness was more coherent in more WEIRD countries. In contrast, the coherence of interdependent happiness was unrelated to a country's "WEIRD-ness." Reliabilities of both happiness measures were lowest in African and Middle Eastern countries, suggesting these two conceptualizations of happiness may not be globally comprehensive. Overall, while the two measures had many similar correlates and properties, the self-focused concept of independent happiness is "WEIRD-er" than interdependent happiness, suggesting cross-cultural researchers should attend to both conceptualizations

Trust Working in Interpersonal Relationships:A Comparative Cultural Perspective with a Focus on East Asian Culture

AbstractSociological analysis of interpersonal trust has focused primarily on general trust, neglecting the role of particular trust. Some analysis of social capital in Asian countries, however, reveals that activities in voluntary associations are grounded on particular trust, posing an important question to Putnam’s thesis linking general trust to democracy and economic development. In order to understand the working of particular trust, we took a comparative cultural perspective to trust. Based on the cultural psychology of Korean trust, trust is characterized as a corollary to the intimacy of relationship. Different degrees of interpersonal trust work through the mediating process of caring mind (maum in Korean vernacular) which is afforded when we see social acts directed upon us. Granting an innate bias of granting trust toward close others, we postulate that human beings engage in activities of trust working. Four types of tactics typically employed in forming trust were provided. Subsequently, a comparative cultural analysis of trust was presented by analyzing indigenous concepts (trust, guanxi, amae, &amp; woori) characteristically representing cultural aspects of trust in different cultures with emphasis on East Asian countries. This comparative analysis characterizes that trust in East Asia is laden heavily with relational affective properties, while trust in theWest relies on cognitive properties. Despite these differences, common features allow meaningful understanding of how trust is constructed and maneuvered in each culture. </jats:sec

Linguistic Diversity Index: A Scientometric Measure to Enhance the Relevance of Small and Minority Group Languages

Current scientometric indexes do not encourage the linguistic diversity of sources cited in academic texts and researchers are not motivated to cite texts written in smaller languages. This diminishes the cultural diversity of the sources cited and limits the representation of small and indigenous cultures. This text proposes a scientometric measure designed to encourage the linguistic diversity of sources cited in articles, books, and papers. The Linguistic Diversity Index is based on two stipulations: (a) the more linguistically diverse the sources, the higher the score, and (b) the rarer the languages cited, the higher the score. If such a metric were used for the evaluation of social science and humanities journals, it would encourage the publication of papers that cite ideas from rarely represented cultural groups such as indigenous nations, ethnic groups from small countries, and other linguistic groups that have been omitted from mainstream scientific discourse. This might help to produce new research, which would help to improve the situation for these groups and create an epistemology that is more just to small cultural groups. </jats:p