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In every country people think others are less happy than they themselves say (2017)
- anonzzzies 3y agoNot reading reports about how happy or miserable people are helps with being happier, I find.
- aziaziazi 3y agoso I guess you just jumped to the comment section without reading the report ?
- lewdev 3y agoso I guess you didn't read the first part of his comment where he said "Not reading reports..."
- kybernetyk 3y agoSame here. I don't read news. I'm much happier. I believe in the old boomer saying: If something really important happens your neighbor is going to tell you about it.
- aetherspawn 3y agoIt looks like the data needs to be normalized? People might be assuming different thresholds of happiness, the same way the common response to "are you ok?" is yes, and continues to be yes until someone is absolutely miserable.
- v7n 3y agoThis is discussed ad nauseam whenever new happiness indices are published. I agree with you, and guess most people would. These surveys likely have linguistic and cultural nuances that I imagine are extremely hard to normalize for.
- p1necone 3y agoSame thing goes for customer support satisfaction ratings - in some countries people will rate every interaction 5/5 unless something went horrendously wrong, in others something would have to be unusually good to get more than a 3-4 out of 5. Don't measure people across regions via these sort of metrics.
- avgcorrection 3y agoYou lie in “are you ok?” interactions because you are talking with someone and there’s all kinds of considerations like “don’t want to lose face” and “don’t want to bother them”. You can be as candid as you want in an anonymous survey.
- derbOac 3y agoI wonder what's more predictive of socioeconomic trends (recessions, life expectancy, etc.): what you think others would say at any given time versus what you say.
- d00mer 3y agoMe: "Given you messed up everything is, I'm still alive and not gone insane. This makes me happy."
- taopai 3y agoCould someone help me understand this plot? What i guessed: 1. Participants were asked how happy they are. 2. After that they were asked about what percentage of people from /their own country/ would answer happy or very happy. 3. Plot XY of the ratio of people who answered happy or very happy (x axis) vs their average of the percentage of how this happy people estimate how many people answered like them (y axis). Did I got it right?
- mdrzn 3y agoYup, and it shows that most people are happy but still think that most other people are unhappy
- stevensanderson 3y agoOr it shows most people answering surveys claim to be happier than they really are.
- amelius 3y agoBut when I visit Facebook, I feel everybody is happy except me.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- Cynthiagoin 3y ago[dead]
- thejackgoode 3y agoExplains some things about Hungary though
- aziaziazi 3y agoWhat’s wrong with Honk Hong and South Korea ? 90% says they’re very or rather happy and thinks only 20% of their peer does. I wonder if that’s linked to a cultural thing. Any Asian expert have an idea here ?
- visarga 3y agoMuch negative bias in press and a culture of suffering?
- moffkalast 3y agoKnowing someone who grew up in HK, they're the most impossibly optimistic person I know. Maybe there's something in the food :P
- charlieyu1 3y agoFrom Hong Kong and I’m curious when this survey is conducted. Seriously I can’t imagine people being happy over the trauma the last few years
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- j16sdiz 3y agoNo. This image was from 2017. Data maybe earlier.
- 411111111111111 3y agoShouldn't this link get a [2017] in the title @dang ? The date can be confirmed from the url itself.
- itronitron 3y agoOne interpretation of the chart is that it shows the extent to which people think their fellow citizens are being honest when they say they are happy.
- smcleod 3y agoNot a very object measurement of happiness, especially without situational or cultural context.
- nathias 3y agothey are all correct
- zmmmmm 3y agois it definitional if you include in the definition of "happy" that you feel you are well off compared to others in your society? ie: if happiness is relative then you can't be happy unless you think others are less happy. Perhaps the trick of modern society is to convince most people, as individuals, that they are better off than average - even when logically that can't be true (putting aside differences b/w means and medians etc).
- avgcorrection 3y agoBeing happy because you think you are better off than some other people is definitely one kind of happiness but not the only one.
- rsynnott 3y ago> ie: if happiness is relative then you can't be happy unless you think others are less happy I don't _think_ most people think along those lines. I'd certainly hope not.
- zmmmmm 3y agoI think if you ask people what happiness is I agree, they'll come up with a different set of things. But if ask them if they are happy, they will reflect on how much worse their life could be and they'll largely see that in terms of how they perceive the rest of society around them. They will feel very guilty saying they are unhappy if they think they are actually better off than most other people are. So I agree with you but still think this effect will have an impact.
- visarga 3y agoMedia bias towards negative reporting, people are just reporting the media image of happiness in their country vs their own level.
- jossclimb 3y agoI expect the same sentiment holds despite the geography.
- jl6 3y agoNot surprising when media hyperfocuses on doom, crime, death and conflict. Society clearly sounds like a terrible place when viewed through that extreme lens, so people’s everyday worries would be mild in comparison to what everybody else seems to be going through.
- raducu 3y ago> Not surprising when media hyperfocuses on doom, crime, death and conflict. I used to think the contrary but nowdays I think you're right. A few years ago I unfollowed almost everybody on facebook and my usage time dropped significantly. That is until facebook started spamming me with doom news articles, on the same exact kind of topics that I'm drawn in. The bottom line is click based "news" has to draw people in on very low quality content on the lines of the 7 cardinal sins + reality escapism.
- infinghxsg 3y ago[dead]
- yshklarov 3y agoThis chart beggars belief. Could we have a link to the actual studies, and not an anonymous image, please??
- j16sdiz 3y agoHere you are: https://ourworldindata.org/collective-pessimism-and-our-inability-to-guess-the-happiness-of-others https://ourworldindata.org/collective-pessimism-and-our-inab...
- wffurr 3y agoThis should be the top link, not the image. The discussion here might be much better if commenters read the article the graph is attached to.
- anovikov 3y agoRead a story about how a large Russian based news site tried to create a "good news" mode which won't prioritise bad news. It was a flop and quickly ended - very few people enabled that mode and ad conversion while in that mode was almost zero. We people are cruel creatures. We don't want news as much as we want to be entertained, and we are very much entertained by watching other people suffering.
- j16sdiz 3y agoThis is 2017 data, guess will be very different after the paramedic.
- feikname 3y agoI don't like that this graph starts at 20%
- itronitron 3y agoThat might explain why Austria is not shown.
- arek_nawo 3y agoSuch an arbitrary chart. On top of that, like other here said - can be easily skewed if the people surveyed are swayed by constant negative news in the media. They can say they're happy because they know it for sure but for others, they only see things in a twisted view.
- laserbeam 3y agoIsn't that what the chart is trying to show? To confirm that yeah, the world is actually happier than we estimate. PS. "arbitrary", no idea if arbitrary, but the chart is difficult to read.
- arek_nawo 3y agoYou can certainly view it from different perspectives, e.g. people are happier than estimated or people estimate lower than actual happiness. So your point is valid as well. As for readability - it took me a while to get it too so I agree.
- fedorhk 3y ago> Yup, and it shows that most people are happy but still think that most other people are unhappy This (and alike) conclusion is likely wrong. If there is a societal/cultural/political expectation to project happiness, people will say they are happy. Many people wouldn’t say they are unhappy to a stranger. Fun fact, sociologists in Russia asking people nowadays “how do people around you feel? good/bad/worried/etc.” exactly because getting sincere answer to “how do you feel?” is impossible.
- p-e-w 3y agoThis explanation is so obvious that I consider any study or chart that doesn't scream this at the reader in big red letters to be nothing short of propaganda. The conclusion those "researchers" would like to draw is that the world is better than "the people" think, when the far more plausible interpretation is that the world is so horribly bad that people are scared to even talk about how they feel.
- zuppy 3y agoI found a book a while ago, that made me change my perspective about how I see the world as a whole. This is the book, it's called Factfulness: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37850908-factfulness https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37850908-factfulness There are a lot of bad things that happen around us (war, hunger, discrimination, etc), but we are at the best time in the entire human history, even with that. Compared with every metric in history, we are better. Even where it's bad, it's less bad than it used to be.
- p-e-w 3y ago> Compared with every metric in history, we are better. That claim alone should immediately make you doubt the metrics being used. In fact, it's easy to find dozens of metrics for which this isn't true. Housing affordability being a very obvious example. And the average democracy index has been going downwards for 15 consecutive years IIRC. Environmental pollution also most certainly isn't "at the best time in the entire human history". You've fallen for propaganda, I'm afraid.
- anovikov 3y agoAnother explanation except "news only show creepy stuff": it's simply that people have different priorities. And we judge other people's life situations according to theirs, and conclude that their lives suck because we would feel unhappy being in their place, just because our priorities are different. Let's say person A is very career oriented and keeps moving cities and countries to do jobs they are offered, their income skyrocketing, but they don't have any extended family connections or close friends because they move frequently and don't feel attached to the place. A person B lives where they were born and have a loving extended family, support them and can always expect to be supported, but as a result, they are stuck in a dead-end, poorly paid job with no prospects because they don't have many opportunities there. Both persons live according to their priorities and are happy; both believe life of another one sucks. And there are plenty of other dimensions in which the same thing can take place.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- asah 3y agoreminder: "happiness" is a construct that varies wildly from one culture to another, and even from one family or person to another. By contrast, happiness as "less misery" is generally more agreed-upon, where misery is deep physical pain, starvation, serious disease, early deaths of friends/family, etc. Pain caused by loss is greater than pleasure gained by attainment. Examples: - some people crave variety/stimulation/entertainment/excitement, others could care less. - some people care about living a long life, others care about living a fulfilling life. - some people crave social standing, others could care less. - some people value education and knowledge, others do not. - some people value "freedom," others prefer to make fewer decisions. ...