Iris Mauss

And we took advantage of the fact that cultures differ with respect to what happiness tends to mean to people.

And we sampled participants from cultures that are more socially oriented, East Asian cultures, Japan and Taiwan.

all the way to cultures that tend to be more individualistically oriented, less socially oriented, the US.

And then we had two cultures in between, Russia and Germany.

And in each of those samples, we asked participants how much they valued happiness, but also what happiness means to them.

And then we looked at their overall levels of well-being.

And what we found was really interesting because it suggests a way to get around that paradox that we've been talking about.

So in the U.S., we found that valuing happiness was very much...

bound up with a more individualistic, less social pursuit of happiness.

And here we found that exact link that we've been talking about.

The more people valued happiness, the less happy they were.

But then as we went in the social direction on that gradient to Germany, to Russia, to East Asia, we found that pursuit of happiness was more and more connected with helping other people and being close with other people.

So what we found is that the more socially people interpret the value of happiness, the more that valuing happiness was associated with higher levels of well-being.

So like many people, I used to have anxiety about speaking in front of audiences.

And as a psychology graduate student, when I first started to have to give research presentations, this anxiety was actually pretty intense, almost overwhelming at the time.

And I remember particularly clearly, I think this was the first talk I had to give as a graduate student,

to faculty and other students in the area I was part of, so maybe a group of 30 people.

So for weeks before that talk and any talk, I would have all these worries circling through my head about all the incredibly foolish things I would definitely say, how I would freeze, sinking feeling of doom, really, and lots of sleepless nights, which doesn't particularly help.

So

My approach was to think, well, wait a minute.