Scientific American recently ran a blog by Finnish psychologist and philosopher Frank Martela, who explains why Finland’s national skepticism about happiness might make them, according to all sorts of indices, the happiest country in the world:
This time it is my duty, as a Finnish expert on well-being research, to explain why the happiness of the Finns has been greatly exaggerated.
More particularly, I’ll argue that there are four separate ways to measure happiness—and depending on which one we choose, we get completely different countries at the top of the rankings. I’ll also argue that Finnish people’s aversion to happiness might paradoxically make them happier.
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[W]e know that societal factors such as gross domestic product per capita; extensiveness of social services; freedom from oppression; and trust in government and fellow citizens can explain a significant proportion of people’s average life satisfaction in a country.
In these measures the Nordic countries—Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland—tend to score highest in the world. Accordingly, it is no surprise that every time we measure life satisfaction, these countries are consistently in the top 10.
But when you look at how much positive emotion people experience, the top of the world looks very different. Suddenly, Latin American countries such as Paraguay, Guatemala and Costa Rica are the happiest countries on earth.
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In one comparison made by the World Health Organization, the per capita prevalence of unipolar depressive disorders is highest in the world in the United States. Among Western countries, Finland is number two. Paradoxically then, the same country can be high on both life satisfaction and depression.
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So while Finland might be good at keeping the average life satisfaction levels high, those at risk for depression might not get enough social support to cope with their low mood. Maybe that’s why Finland has the highest number of heavy metal bands per capita in the world.
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[W]hen Shigehiro Oishi, of the University of Virginia, and Ed Diener, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, compared 132 different countries based on whether people felt that their life has an important purpose or meaning, African countries including Togo and Senegal were at the top of the ranking, while the U.S. and Finland were far behind.
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Luckily, Finnish people might have one asset as regards happiness: The Finnish tendency to downplay one’s own happiness and the norm against too much public display of joy might actually make Finns happier. This is because social comparison seems to play a significant role in people’s life satisfaction. If everybody else is doing better than you, it is hard to be satisfied with your life conditions, no matter how good they objectively are.
This is why researchers are worried that social media, where people are constantly exposed to idealized versions of other people’s lives, might make people more depressed.