Happiness and Hostile Attributions in a Cross-Cultural Context: The Importance of Interdependence

Although the association between happiness and a positive attitude towards other people is well documented, little is known about the attributional processes that characterize happy individuals when they are faced with negative social events. Because of the impact of culture on social relationships and self/other-construal, both attributional style and subjective happiness may be influenced by culture. To examine the interplay of factors that may be associated with happiness, we propose a model in which interdependence predicts happiness, but only for individuals who do not have an inclination to make hostile attributions about the others. In order to determine whether the identified patterns are culture specific or culturally universal, we have conducted our study in three culturally diverse countries: the United States, Poland and Japan (N = 707). We expected that level of happiness would be linked to interdependent self, and that it would be also associated with lower levels of hostile attributions. We also predicted an interaction between levels of interdependent self and hostile attributions in explaining level of happiness. Results mostly confirmed our predictions and remained consistent across all studied countries. We conclude with emphasis on the importance of embracing both negative and positive aspects of experience when studying wellbeing, especially in a cross-cultural context.