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July 5, 2023

Happiness is not as simple as it sounds.

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Philosophers advise that the pursuit of happiness may be a misguided aspiration, and psychologists warn that illusory happiness achieved through denial can harm your health.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s World Happiness Report 2023 has perplexed many people with its surprising national rankings of what it termed “happiness.” 

Because this significant work has spawned many commentaries and much confusion, it awaits clarification.

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Finns and Israelis have little in common yet are now doubly bonded: Both ranked in the top ten on “happiness” – Finland first and Israel fourth – and many in both lands are bewildered by those numbers. A Finn interviewed about the WHR wondered why she felt unhappy if Finns were supposed to be the world’s happiest, noting that they view themselves as a rather gloomy lot and not inclined to undue smiling. I heard a quip that an extrovert in Nordic countries stares at someone else’s shoes rather than his own. Native Israelis are known as sabras, desert cacti that are prickly on the outside but sweet on the inside. They also aren’t prone to excess smiling, as easily observed in tense faces and periodic outbursts during Jerusalem’s rush hour.

So, how do we understand these ratings? 

The explanation for this confusion is that the statistic used by the WHR did not measure happiness in the conventional sense of being emotionally happy. Its ranking was instead based on a question that addressed what is more accurately termed life satisfaction. The WHR asked more than 100,000 respondents in 137 countries to “evaluate their current life as a whole,” with 10 being the “best possible life” and 0 the “worst possible.” Evaluating one’s life “as a whole” is a broad concept that includes diverse factors open to interpretation, and emotional happiness may not be one of the factors. Commentators in Israel opined that the country’s high ranking was related less to positive emotion than to Israel offering a meaningful life. 

This conundrum about happiness can be clarified by examining the WHR data. Besides measuring life satisfaction, the WHR included subjective data about positive and negative emotions, including laughter, enjoyment, interest, worry, sadness, and anger. It also reported objective data about the quality of life, covering six categories of well-being: per capita GDP, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceived corruption. The “happiness” rankings did not include positive and negative emotions or quality-of-life measures, using those criteria only to understand the rankings better. 

The WHR addressed three aspects of happiness: Life Satisfaction, Emotional Happiness, and Quality of Life. Psychologist Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, established positive psychology as a scientific discipline. He noted that happiness results from a pleasurable life with more positive than negative emotions, an engaged life with many interests, or a meaningful life with a strong sense of purpose. The positive and negative affect data in the WHR, and directly address happiness as an emotional state rather than the multi-faceted life satisfaction measure. When positive and negative emotions are used, the rankings look very different from the life satisfaction rankings. 

Despite its high life satisfaction rank, Israel scored extremely low in positive emotions, 114th out of 137 countries. This score is perilously close to veering into more negative than positive emotions, and thus an unhappy state. Israel’s positive emotion score is only slightly above Iran’s, and much lower than number-one Guatemala’s. Despite 75 years of miraculous growth and abundant sunshine, chronic strife understandably makes smiling infrequent. Israel did better in managing negative emotions, ranking 19th, likely a function of resilience cultivated from a history of coping with adversity. Finland did well in positive emotions, ranking 26th, and their negativity was also low, ranking 12th, close to Israel’s.