Every year, the UN ranks the countries of the world in terms of happiness. The top 3 most often includes the Scandinavian states, such as Finland, Denmark, Iceland. But do their residents agree with this? Australian scientists understood.
An international team of researchers led by Brock Bastian, professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne (Australia), has been studying the consequences of social pressure to which people are subjected through the mass media for many years — primarily through social networks, advertising and self-development books.
In particular, we are talking about an unspoken “ban” on sadness, sadness, melancholy and despondency — people are constantly broadcasting the idea that they should experience and radiate only positive emotions, and being in an emotional decline is simply shameful. Studies have shown that the more actively people are forced to «be positive», the higher the risk of depression.
This time, Bastian and his colleagues, whose new article in Scientific Reports, decided to find out how the strength of the manifestation of such an effect depends on the place that a particular country occupies in the World Happiness Index — Rating of countries in the world in terms of happiness.
Scientists surveyed almost 7500 people from 40 countries about their emotional state, mood, and satisfaction with their lives. The survey involved both residents of countries consistently in the top 10 rankings, such as the Netherlands and Canada, and residents of «unlucky» countries, such as Uganda and Senegal.
Participants were also asked to rate the extent to which they feel society compulsion to feel happy. The researchers compared these data with the position of a particular country in the «ranking of happiness.»
It turned out that “compulsion to happiness” is experienced by people in all countries to one degree or another, and the stronger this social pressure, the worse it is for the psychological state of citizens. In this case, they are less likely to experience positive emotions and more likely to suffer from symptoms of stress, depression, anxiety.
At the same time, this relationship is especially pronounced in countries with a high «happiness index» — the «happier» the country as a whole, the more painfully each individual person feels his inconsistency with this general prosperity.
Living surrounded by faces sparkling with happiness and constantly feeling like a “black sheep” is much harder from an emotional point of view than living in a society where social norms do not require “being positive” all the time, the researchers concluded.