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Sounds like they're just using the wrong word for what they're measuring. Perhaps we should be talking about "contentment" instead of "happiness" here? The wor

Sounds like they're just using the wrong word for what they're measuring. Perhaps we should be talking about "contentment" instead of "happiness" here? The word 'happy' has an unusually large load of nuance to it, as well, not the sort of thing I would want to try to nail down for scientific study.

dhimes 5y ago
It bothers me that the re-purposing of words is getting so pervasive. It's good that people like you spot it and call it out.
- woleium 5y ago
  Why? Languages are constantly evolving, and always have been. Chaucer (middle English) is so far from modern English that it may as well be a completely different language, and yet it's what was spoken in England at the time (ad1400). Here is an example (with modern English translation): https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/millers-prologue-and-tale https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/millers-prologue-and-t...
  - dhimes 5y ago
    That's a slow change. That's not so bad. What's happening today seems to be deliberate change to recast ideas (and people) in a particular light for the purposes of persuasion or even deceit.
    - woleium 5y ago
      We must learn the newspeak, or its to room 101 with us all! /s (it's an Orwell reference)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - noir_lord 5y ago
    That's neat. If I try and read it silently it's much harder than just reading it, then it sounds like my grandfather who had a really strong Yorkshire accent.
- lokimedes 5y ago
  Try being a physicist surrounded by frontend developers babbling on about coding in Atom, using Electron as a framework and catching that rocket ship by deploying everything as micro-services with Nuclio.
  - dhimes 5y ago
    haha as a physicist I totally feel it!
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
To be quite cynical, I think this is a textbook sociological study. You take a loaded word like happiness, twist the definition into something that fits both A.) what you can easily measure on a survey and B.) gives you results that fits your own preconceived idea of who should be happy (the Nordics) . Then you publish your study claiming you've found the keys to happiness, or if you're too modest to do that then the lay media makes such a claim.
mrweasel 5y ago
It might be a cultural thing, if you're content in Danish you're "tilfreds", but that's still a more positive word than content. Happiness is translated to "lykkelig", which technically is a much more positive state than "tilfreds" (also much more positive than happy), but I don't think many Danes distinguishes that hard between "lykkelig" and "tilfreds", in terms of expressing their level of happiness with everyday life. We're generally more muted in our feelings and tend to not use the extremes, unless sarcastically. At least that's my take on Danish mentality. You could perhaps use reasonable or tolerable, if you want the same result at perhaps Americans would expect to get from "content".
- omginternets 5y ago
  It seems like this might map onto the "joy" / "happiness" distinction in English? The term "happiness" has come to be understood as something closer to what "joy" originally meant, but stricto sensu it's closer in meaning to "contentment" than something like "elation".
2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
If you have ever filled a gratitude journal you often put mundane things that make you happy. “My cake turned out great!” So who is to say what makes people happy?
- nevinera 5y ago
  Nobody, personal meanings to the word vary too much - that's kind of my point :-) At the end of the day, somebody chose to use that word to describe a culture, and anyone with no information about that culture is going to make wildly wrong predictions based on the statement. Choosing words and phrases that communicate meaning accurately is pretty much the fundamental responsibility of journalism, and I'd describe this as a failure.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
In pop psychology, this is usually the contrast between happiness and satisfaction. In articles that contrast the two, they imply that satisfaction is the preferable aim. Happiness is the fleeting emotion, satisfaction the long-lasting one. Happiness is the emotion that you really only notice if it is improving or decreasing, a steady state of happiness is not noticed. The standard example is having kids -- kids often decrease instantaneous happiness levels but generally increase long term satisfaction. Put standard pop psychology disclaimer here.
tokai 5y ago
I personally don't like WHR. But it's almost like scholarly communication don't rely on a naive dictionary understanding of words. Happiness here signifies performance within their WELLBYs methodology. Discussing the nuances of the word happiness is getting lost in semantics, as it's meaning in this context is axiomatic to what ever WELLBY signifies. Critiquing their word use instead of their methods is getting lost in the sauce.
- nevinera 5y ago
  When you pop out a headline like "nordics happiest people on earth!" and a million people read it, what matters is _not_ whether your definition of 'happy' was technically correct within the framework of the study you're writing about. You can try to hold the position that all those readers are wrong, and the article is fine. But more reasonable people will think you're being silly, and that journalists are basically responsible for choosing words that will be interpreted correctly by their readers. But if your issue was with who I was criticizing, that's fair - the researchers probably weren't intentionally mis-communicating, and my criticism wasn't targeted clearly enough.
twobitshifter 5y ago
The happiest people I meet are in places like Jamaica, Trinidad, or Thailand. That type of happiness is obviously not tied to politics or a social safety nets. In Finland, I remember Finns taking cruises to Estonia just to buy tax free liquor. It’s unsurprising that many in Estonia consider Finland to be a nation of drunks.

dhimes 5y ago

It bothers me that the re-purposing of words is getting so pervasive. It's good that people like you spot it and call it out.

woleium 5y ago
Why? Languages are constantly evolving, and always have been. Chaucer (middle English) is so far from modern English that it may as well be a completely different language, and yet it's what was spoken in England at the time (ad1400). Here is an example (with modern English translation): https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/millers-prologue-and-tale https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/millers-prologue-and-t...
- dhimes 5y ago
  That's a slow change. That's not so bad. What's happening today seems to be deliberate change to recast ideas (and people) in a particular light for the purposes of persuasion or even deceit.
  - woleium 5y ago
    We must learn the newspeak, or its to room 101 with us all! /s (it's an Orwell reference)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- noir_lord 5y ago
  That's neat. If I try and read it silently it's much harder than just reading it, then it sounds like my grandfather who had a really strong Yorkshire accent.
lokimedes 5y ago
Try being a physicist surrounded by frontend developers babbling on about coding in Atom, using Electron as a framework and catching that rocket ship by deploying everything as micro-services with Nuclio.
- dhimes 5y ago
  haha as a physicist I totally feel it!

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago

To be quite cynical, I think this is a textbook sociological study. You take a loaded word like happiness, twist the definition into something that fits both A.) what you can easily measure on a survey and B.) gives you results that fits your own preconceived idea of who should be happy (the Nordics) . Then you publish your study claiming you've found the keys to happiness, or if you're too modest to do that then the lay media makes such a claim.

mrweasel 5y ago

It might be a cultural thing, if you're content in Danish you're "tilfreds", but that's still a more positive word than content. Happiness is translated to "lykkelig", which technically is a much more positive state than "tilfreds" (also much more positive than happy), but I don't think many Danes distinguishes that hard between "lykkelig" and "tilfreds", in terms of expressing their level of happiness with everyday life. We're generally more muted in our feelings and tend to not use the extremes, unless sarcastically. At least that's my take on Danish mentality. You could perhaps use reasonable or tolerable, if you want the same result at perhaps Americans would expect to get from "content".

omginternets 5y ago
It seems like this might map onto the "joy" / "happiness" distinction in English? The term "happiness" has come to be understood as something closer to what "joy" originally meant, but stricto sensu it's closer in meaning to "contentment" than something like "elation".

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago

If you have ever filled a gratitude journal you often put mundane things that make you happy. “My cake turned out great!” So who is to say what makes people happy?

nevinera 5y ago
Nobody, personal meanings to the word vary too much - that's kind of my point :-) At the end of the day, somebody chose to use that word to describe a culture, and anyone with no information about that culture is going to make wildly wrong predictions based on the statement. Choosing words and phrases that communicate meaning accurately is pretty much the fundamental responsibility of journalism, and I'd describe this as a failure.

bryanlarsen 5y ago

In pop psychology, this is usually the contrast between happiness and satisfaction. In articles that contrast the two, they imply that satisfaction is the preferable aim. Happiness is the fleeting emotion, satisfaction the long-lasting one. Happiness is the emotion that you really only notice if it is improving or decreasing, a steady state of happiness is not noticed. The standard example is having kids -- kids often decrease instantaneous happiness levels but generally increase long term satisfaction. Put standard pop psychology disclaimer here.

tokai 5y ago

I personally don't like WHR. But it's almost like scholarly communication don't rely on a naive dictionary understanding of words. Happiness here signifies performance within their WELLBYs methodology. Discussing the nuances of the word happiness is getting lost in semantics, as it's meaning in this context is axiomatic to what ever WELLBY signifies. Critiquing their word use instead of their methods is getting lost in the sauce.

nevinera 5y ago
When you pop out a headline like "nordics happiest people on earth!" and a million people read it, what matters is _not_ whether your definition of 'happy' was technically correct within the framework of the study you're writing about. You can try to hold the position that all those readers are wrong, and the article is fine. But more reasonable people will think you're being silly, and that journalists are basically responsible for choosing words that will be interpreted correctly by their readers. But if your issue was with who I was criticizing, that's fair - the researchers probably weren't intentionally mis-communicating, and my criticism wasn't targeted clearly enough.

twobitshifter 5y ago

The happiest people I meet are in places like Jamaica, Trinidad, or Thailand. That type of happiness is obviously not tied to politics or a social safety nets. In Finland, I remember Finns taking cruises to Estonia just to buy tax free liquor. It’s unsurprising that many in Estonia consider Finland to be a nation of drunks.