Subjective Happiness Among Polish and Hadza People.

Tomasz Frackowiak,Piotr Sorokowski,Marta Kowal,Anna Oleszkiewicz,Agata Groyecka,Maciej Karwowski,Marina Butovskaya

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01173

Abstract

Life satisfaction and happiness were broadly studied in Western populations, whereas evidence from traditional societies remains surprisingly scarce. We collected data on the happiness from 145 Hadza, and compared it with data obtained from 156 Poles, representing Westernized society. Participants were asked to answer four simple questions from Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1999). Results indicate that Hadza report a higher level of happiness with their lives than do Polish people. Our findings also show that sex was not related to happiness in both populations, while age was a negative predictor of happiness, but only among Poles. Therefore, we hypothesize that positive perception of aging in societies may increase their actual happiness.

Highlights

Life satisfaction and happiness in developed, Western countries are continuously monitored by means of complex socio-economical indices
Given the exploratory character of the finding that in Hadza there were no links between age and happiness, while among Poles the relationship appeared to be curvilinear, we attempted to replicate it in Study 2
To examine the factors underlying the quality of life we regressed sex, age, group, and an interaction factor Age x Group on the happiness

Summary

Introduction

Life satisfaction and happiness in developed, Western countries are continuously monitored by means of complex socio-economical indices. Existing research has focused on happiness and well-being of people from developing countries from Africa, Asia or South America (Chindarkar et al, 2018; Goodman et al, 2018; Markussen et al, 2018; Tran et al, 2018; Deng et al, 2019). According to our knowledge, data on the happiness in indigenous, traditional societies is remarkably scarce. Gallup World Poll (see Diener et al, 2018) study including samples from 166 countries has shown that the level of happiness and life satisfaction are functions of social and material quality of life. Knowing that material resources are an important predictor of happiness and life satisfaction, one could expect that traditional life in tough conditions should decrease happiness

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