Killer Cultures: Discovering the Effects of Culture on One's Personal Happiness

By eating, praying and loving, Elizabeth Gilbert visited three different countries to discover the influence of culture on individual happiness and happiness. In the four months I spent in Italy, Gilbert investigated the effects of food on human health and overall happiness. Pasta, a staple food, which is a symbol of Italy, is a so-called "comfortable food". It is a food that brings comfort and happiness, usually containing high sugar and carbohydrates. The recession rate in the United States is about 6%, much higher than 8% in Italy.

Pursuit of happiness affects differences between happiness and cross cultures. Recent studies have shown that conscious pursuit of happiness and American happiness has an adverse effect, giving a feeling of loneliness and disappointment. On the other hand, the pursuit of happiness is not about predicting the outcome of the welfare of German participants but is related to the improvement of welfare level in Russia, Japan and Taiwan. The possibility of interpretation of these cross-cultural differences is due to differences in self-organization (independence and interdependence) and degree of cultural collectivism. In other words, in the collectivistic culture of related harmony prediction SWB, pursue happiness in a more socially participatory way compared to individualistic culture, the interest in self becomes stronger, self-esteem is important for satisfaction of life It is a predictor. .

Ecology forms a culture, culture influences the development of personality. Personality diversity is universal and cultural. Several culturally specific aspects correspond to cultural syndromes such as complexity, tension, individualism, and collectivism. Many literature shows that five personality factors appear in various cultures. However, caution is needed when discussing this universality. Most of the studies do not include emic (culture specificity) characteristics, and samples that are largely different from the Western sample culture have not been studied either.

Student of Boas, Ruth Benedict explains the study of cultural influence on personality by studying various patterns and themes of culture. She acknowledges that global cultural communication makes it difficult to keep track of the civil society's cultural model, but primitive communities in remote areas maintain a common identity through their values, beliefs, and rituals To do. When Benedict looked at her book 'Culture Model' she described her comparison of the cultural patterns of two different groups of Indian groups located abroad of North American Indian and Papua New Guinea. In her study, she discovered that although these came from similar genetic collections, these groups are quite different in their respective value systems. For example, the idea of ​​a tribe about "good ball" is different from what the other departments think.