Pop quiz: If you knew you were going to lose your wallet, which country would you choose to lose it in?
That’s an unhappy question to which, fortunately, there is a happy answer. If you said Finland (or any of the Scandinavian countries), you would be right. And it’s not a coincidence that those countries also rise to the top of the list as the happiest nations on earth.
The second question is, what can we, in the increasingly unhappy United States, do to be more like Finland?
That’s an unhappy question to which, fortunately, there is a happy answer. If you said Finland (or any of the Scandinavian countries), you would be right. And it’s not a coincidence that those countries also rise to the top of the list as the happiest nations on earth.
The second question is, what can we, in the increasingly unhappy United States, do to be more like Finland?
The answer may be that we should simply believe more in the goodness of the people around us. That can be easier said than done in the current political climate, where perceptions about corruption and dishonesty seem to outpace reality.
Gallup, in partnership with the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, just released the annual World Happiness Report. Finland leads the world for the eighth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. Norway came in seventh. No surprise there. It’s pretty much all pickled herring and ski parties at the top.
One year ago, I was walking through a small Swedish city with my wife at about the time this annual report was published. As I wrote at the time, we were battling a headwind registering a windchill of 17 degrees Fahrenheit — miserably and unhappily cold. The people around us were scurrying. Few of them looked ready to burst into song.
By contrast, a month ago I was on an assignment in Bangladesh, where the weather was pleasant in February. While virtually everyone I cast a smile at returned it readily, but Bangladesh came in 134th on the happiness report.
Clearly, happiness, at least as Gallup and co. measured it, has nothing to do with the weather or other external conditions. But those lost wallets, on the other hand…
I’ve written about lost wallet tests before. In one such experiment, researchers littered the world with 17,000 of them, filled with different amounts of cash, or in some cases a key, and a business card. Researchers would hand them in at public places, such as banks, hotels or the post office, and then wait to see what happened.
The vast majority were returned, intact, to the name on the business card. The more money they contained, the more likely they were to be returned.
The problem is, we don’t tend to believe this is so.
The happiness report asked people to guess how many times folks around them engaged in benevolent activities, including volunteering, donating and helping strangers. Then it asked, specifically, how likely did they think their own lost wallet would be returned by either a neighbor, a stranger or a police officer.
The Finns and Danes each scored high in their expectations of people in each category. So did the Swedes, although they were more skeptical of strangers, finishing 32nd in that measurement.
Americans finished 52nd in their faith in strangers returning wallets.
In reality, virtually all nations performed better in real terms than their people projected, but the Nordics were indeed the most honest with wallets.
It turns out that human expectations are at least as important as real performance. In the United States, the percentage of returned wallets was roughly double what U.S. respondents expected it to be.
The report’s authors said that “expected benevolence is a substantial predictor of life satisfaction, meaning that people may be made needlessly unhappy by their unwarranted pessimism.”
In other words, exaggerated cynicism emanating from Washington about corruption and dishonesty can make us less happy and more skeptical about our neighbors.
Americans ranked 25th in their faith that a police officer would return a wallet — a result, the report said, that reflects “how people rate the quality of their public institutions.”
The good news is that the antidote to this cynicism is as simple as doing good things. The report said “simply witnessing someone else giving has positive effects on wellbeing.” That is a note of encouragement to people who believe one person can influence many for good.
Gallup CEO Jon Clifton is quoted in the report as saying it “proves we underestimate how kind the world really is. If we want stronger communities and economies, we must invest in what truly matters: each other.”
The report also ties happiness to simple things such as sharing meals with someone, connecting with others and living in large households with family bonds. But the need for faith in other people is the biggest lesson.
It turns out you don’t need to fight a biting late-winter wind in a Scandinavian town square to be happy. You just need to see the good around you, and maybe step back from toxic partisanship for a while.
Gallup, in partnership with the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, just released the annual World Happiness Report. Finland leads the world for the eighth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden. Norway came in seventh. No surprise there. It’s pretty much all pickled herring and ski parties at the top.
One year ago, I was walking through a small Swedish city with my wife at about the time this annual report was published. As I wrote at the time, we were battling a headwind registering a windchill of 17 degrees Fahrenheit — miserably and unhappily cold. The people around us were scurrying. Few of them looked ready to burst into song.
By contrast, a month ago I was on an assignment in Bangladesh, where the weather was pleasant in February. While virtually everyone I cast a smile at returned it readily, but Bangladesh came in 134th on the happiness report.
Clearly, happiness, at least as Gallup and co. measured it, has nothing to do with the weather or other external conditions. But those lost wallets, on the other hand…
I’ve written about lost wallet tests before. In one such experiment, researchers littered the world with 17,000 of them, filled with different amounts of cash, or in some cases a key, and a business card. Researchers would hand them in at public places, such as banks, hotels or the post office, and then wait to see what happened.
The vast majority were returned, intact, to the name on the business card. The more money they contained, the more likely they were to be returned.
The problem is, we don’t tend to believe this is so.
The happiness report asked people to guess how many times folks around them engaged in benevolent activities, including volunteering, donating and helping strangers. Then it asked, specifically, how likely did they think their own lost wallet would be returned by either a neighbor, a stranger or a police officer.
The Finns and Danes each scored high in their expectations of people in each category. So did the Swedes, although they were more skeptical of strangers, finishing 32nd in that measurement.
Americans finished 52nd in their faith in strangers returning wallets.
In reality, virtually all nations performed better in real terms than their people projected, but the Nordics were indeed the most honest with wallets.
It turns out that human expectations are at least as important as real performance. In the United States, the percentage of returned wallets was roughly double what U.S. respondents expected it to be.
The report’s authors said that “expected benevolence is a substantial predictor of life satisfaction, meaning that people may be made needlessly unhappy by their unwarranted pessimism.”
In other words, exaggerated cynicism emanating from Washington about corruption and dishonesty can make us less happy and more skeptical about our neighbors.
Americans ranked 25th in their faith that a police officer would return a wallet — a result, the report said, that reflects “how people rate the quality of their public institutions.”
The good news is that the antidote to this cynicism is as simple as doing good things. The report said “simply witnessing someone else giving has positive effects on wellbeing.” That is a note of encouragement to people who believe one person can influence many for good.
Gallup CEO Jon Clifton is quoted in the report as saying it “proves we underestimate how kind the world really is. If we want stronger communities and economies, we must invest in what truly matters: each other.”
The report also ties happiness to simple things such as sharing meals with someone, connecting with others and living in large households with family bonds. But the need for faith in other people is the biggest lesson.
It turns out you don’t need to fight a biting late-winter wind in a Scandinavian town square to be happy. You just need to see the good around you, and maybe step back from toxic partisanship for a while.
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