While the notion of pursuing high levels of happiness is common in societies labelled as WEIRD—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010), other traditions prioritize different ideals of a good life or well-being.

Across cultures, well-being is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon, with a sense of meaning, a sense of harmony, a sense of spirituality, a sense of happiness, and other senses being variously composed into what people idealize as a good life. So far, however, there has been little bottom-up research devoted to the diverse ways in which people across cultures imagine their ideal good life.

Our project addresses this gap. We are doing so, by running a large cross-cultural study covering 50+ countries, and a series of in-depth experimental studies.

1. Which type of a good life do lay people idealize across cultures? Is a happy life tantamount to a good life, or is a meaningful life, harmonious life, spiritual life, or any other type of good life given more value than happiness?

2. What are psychological and cultural explanations that can account for the above problem at the macro-level and individual-level, and that can explain the potential cross-level interactions?

3. How cultural variation in ideal types of well-being can be translated into the culturally sensitive version of National Accounts of Well- being?

4. What is the pyramid of well-being types?

In the search for explanatory variables, our particular interest is directed towards:

(1) values (Schwartz, 2006),

(2) cultural models of selfhoods (Vignoles et al., 2016),

(3) sense of responsibility (Rheaume, et al., 1995), and

(4) psychological motives (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Other variables are also interesting for us.

The proposed project will result in cultural models of well-being.

We will prepare and test the methodology for a culturally sensitive version of the National Accounts of Well-being (Diener et al., 2015; Krys, Capaldi, et al., 2020).

The proposed research will become a novel and important contribution to the public and scientific debate on well-being and future paradigms of national accounts of well-being. Such knowledge may be used to inform policymakers and country leaders who could include these perspectives into their strategic goals. Our study will help countries shape their policies in a way reflecting their indigenously defined well-being.