My general hypothesis is that most people are happier when they feel typical or normal (even when they claim to value being different). This seems to be the ess

My general hypothesis is that most people are happier when they feel typical or normal (even when they claim to value being different). This seems to be the essence of lots of advertising. To increase their own happiness, most people want to "normalize" everyone around them (levels of wealth, values, etc). Perhaps national happiness (since that is the level of society being discussed) is a joint function of cultural AND financial homogeneity? Many poor countries with high cultural homogeneity have tremendous financial heterogeneity (e.g., wealthy strongmen and their lackeys), which leads to unhappiness. There are more ways that people want to be normal than just cultural and financial. For example, I would also posit that people with more common personality traits are probably happier. However, money and culture seem to cover a large fraction of how people perceive normality.