Previous research indicates that the significance of love varies considerably across cultures. In the present study, we introduce an often-overlooked cultural factor – religiosity – to explore its influence on the relationship between being in love and five dimensions of subjective well-being. We conducted two cross-cultural studies with 31,608 participants from 117 samples across 83 societies. Our findings rev...
The purpose of this paper is to understand the implications of different dimensions of cultural models of selfhood for the frequency of being in love across cultures. This is achieved by analyzing large cross-cultural datasets encompassing 49 and 70 countries. In doing so, this paper extends the current discussion regarding the impact of cultural contexts and individual mindsets on the experience of being in lo...
Psychological science tends to treat subjective well-being and happiness synonymously. We start from the assumption that subjective well-being is more than being happy to ask the fundamental question: What is the ideal level of happiness? From a cross-cultural perspective, we propose that the idealization of attaining maximum levels of happiness may be especially characteristic of Western, educated, industrial,...