Do You Value More: Your Own Happiness or that of your family?

A recent research looks at 49 civilizations’ views on happiness in the individual and the family.

Does the need for happiness outweigh all other considerations? Everywhere, people place a higher priority on family satisfaction than on personal happiness. And when we realise that someone is family for life, we care about them the most.

The most significant choices we make in life are considered in order to maximise our level of enjoyment. We select a career or marry someone because we think they will make us happy.

Even the decisions we make on a daily basis are intended to make life a bit more joyful. sipping coffee while seated at a café. lunching with a trusted buddy. after supper, watching a “Ted Lasso” episode.

Because the desire to be happy is so strong and pervasive, behavioural scientists refer to it as “the ultimate dependent variable.” There is nothing more significant in a psychological sense.

But is it actually the case? Does the need for happiness outweigh all other considerations? Or is the happiness of one’s family a more significant type of happiness?

Studies of Personal and Family Happiness That Cross National Borders

A shocking finding was revealed by a global team of academics two years ago. Numerous college students in four nations—Canada, Colombia, Japan, and Poland—said they preferred the happiness of their family above their own (Krys et al., 2021). The discovery was unexpected because the same pattern was shown in all four nations, including Canada, which has a distinctly individualistic culture and is likely to prioritise personal issues over those of the family.

Everyone values family happiness more than personal pleasure, according to the researchers, who were led by cultural psychologist Kuba Krys at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Krys and his associates carried out a second investigation to examine the generalizability of their findings. More than 12,000 people from 49 nations across six continents were polled. The majority of participants (83%) were college students, with an average age of 25.

The participants responded to a series of inquiries meant to gauge their opinions on

• the significance of one’s own happiness

• the significance of happy families

Their replies provide convincing proof that the phenomena “family happiness is valued more than personal happiness” is a global truth (Krys et al., 2023).

In 48 of the 49 nations under investigation, both men and women agreed that their families’ happiness and well-being came before their own. Despite the little change, it was statistically significant. Furthermore, the importance of family happiness was observed in both highly individualistic nations like Australia and the United States as well as in collectivistic societies like Nigeria and Taiwan.

Relational Mobility’s Function

Following a careful analysis of their data, Krys’s team discovered one factor—relational mobility—that could accurately predict how much respondents preferred family satisfaction over personal pleasure.

The ease with which people of a community can establish or break interpersonal ties is known as relational mobility (RM). People have very few friends in low RM civilizations, such as those in East Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, yet these bonds are strong and difficult to break. Relationships can form and end swiftly in high RM civilizations, such as those in North America, Western Europe, and Latin America, for instance. People are more likely to make new families, leave behind existing families, and make new acquaintances (Thomson et al., 2018).

The relevance of family satisfaction was shown to have a relatively substantial inverse connection (r = -0.44) with relational mobility. According to their research, people in countries with low RM placed a higher priority on family than they did on personal satisfaction. It makes sense that way. We value family most when we are certain that they will always be a part of our lives and won’t be easily replaced or abandoned.

The results of this extensive cross-national study may lead behavioural scientists to reevaluate their earlier assertion that personal happiness is the ultimate dependent variable, despite the usual limitations—nonrepresentative samples and the potential for socially desirable responses, both of which Krys and his colleagues acknowledge. It seems that family happiness is much more important.