Pleasure, meaning or spirituality: Cross-cultural differences in orientations to happiness across 12 countries

Abstract

Firms and institutions are increasingly embracing well-being initiatives as a critical way to retain and engage with their employees, customers and citizens all over the world. However, cross-cultural research on the paths to happiness remains scarce and fragmented, typically conceptualizing happiness as an individualistic pleasure-based construct without considering its collectivistic meaning-based dimension. This research investigates simultaneously how hedonic (pleasure) and eudaimonic (meaning and spirituality) orientations to happiness (life satisfaction) vary across 12 countries and among 2615 individuals representing different regions of the world (six continents) and different cultural contexts (individualism or collectivism). Findings reveal no significant difference in terms of the structure of happiness across countries, and that meaning emerges as a stronger predictor of life satisfaction compared to pleasure and spirituality. Accordingly, we inform human resource and marketing managers, policy makers and individuals about common routes to well-being in an international context.