Dubai: The theme of happiness has never been more pronounced than it is in Dubai these days. From customer happiness centres and happiness meters to happiness parades and happiness markets, there’s a happy hype everywhere. But as the UAE marks International day of Happiness on March 20, XPRESS spoke to experts to find out if individuals can tell how happy they are at the personal level. While the answer is yes, just how they can make such an assessment eludes many.
Two perspectives
Priya Cima, co-founder of the well-being site mymedini.com, said, “Happiness is a feeling, a state of being and an all-encompassing way to live life. Research shows that it can be measured from two perspectives: subjective and objective well-being.”
She said many countries have come forward with their own community scores of objective well-being by measuring indices like people’s income, education, safety and other variables. “This information speaks to the quality of life and the quantitative indicators that allow us to understand how happy the society and country is on a whole.”
Individual levels
According to Cima, subjective well-being is characterised more by individual levels of happiness. She said, “It tends to focus on self-reporting of one’s own judgment of life and is dependent on his or her cognitive and affective elements. While cognitive refers to a perception of life satisfaction, affective is the emotions and moods. Some of the variables measured can also include resilience, the individual’s capacity to “bounce back” in a situation, sense of accommodation, which is a person’s capacity to accept others and adjust their way of thinking or behaving, optimism, locus of control and self-esteem.”
She said some behavioural measurements include frequency of smiling or laughing, instances of generosity, kinds of relationships and social connectivity. “The OECD in fact has published guidelines by which measurements and surveys have been developed to understand subjective well-being.
Personality traits such as extroversion and neuroticism have also been found to be an influencer.” She said there are concerns about self-reporting as they must take into account the individual’s state of being at the time of reporting and situational factors that may influence the response. “To manage the concern, a multi-method battery is used where possible.
Measuring happiness is a complex undertaking and requires evaluating at the individual and societal levels in many different contexts. However, research has shown us that an individual who is married, an extrovert, optimistic, exercises regularly and feels he or she is in good health and has healthy social connections living in a society where he or she believes they have freedom, feels fulfilled at work and is religious tends to be a happy individual,” she noted.
