Russians may be happier than they appear, but they hide it

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-05/nruh-rmb050417.php

Public Release: 4-May-2017
Russians may be happier than they appear, but they hide it
National Research University Higher School of Economics

A comparative cross-cultural study conducted by the HSE International Laboratory of Positive Psychology of Personality and Motivation has found that Russians tend to be as open with their friends as Americans, but unlike Americans, Russians prefer to hide their happiness when talking to strangers or government officials. These findings were published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology in the paper Russians Inhibit the Expression of Happiness to Strangers: Testing a Display Rule Model. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022022117699883

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'Happiness is not some kind of an admirable but distant goal, but a real psychological phenomenon which can have a significant impact on society and economy of a particular country. Many countries conduct surveys regularly in order to find out how satisfied and happy their citizens are and how new laws and policies affect these parameters. Happiness and unhappiness come with multiple social consequences -- according to research, an unhappy person can be more prone to alcoholism, drug addiction, risky behaviour and negative forms of social interaction; in contrast, happy people are more likely to succeed in life and maintain good health.'

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The main finding is fairly optimistic: Russians may actually be happier than they appear -- they just prefer not to show it. 'Looking at our gloomy faces one might assume that many Russians are unhappy, but the real reason may be that we tend to reveal our happiness only to family and friends and only when feel really good,' Osin suggests. 'This trait makes us similar to members of collectivistic East Asian cultures, such as Japan and China, where hiding certain emotions to maintain harmony in the group is considered the cultural norm.'

The study also reveals that unlike the USA, where the tendency to inhibit the expression of happiness is associated with lower levels of subjective wellbeing -- i.e. dissatisfaction with life, predominance of negative emotions, unmet basic needs -- no such association has been found in Russia. In other words, Americans tend to hold back the expression of their positive emotions only when something is wrong, while Russians find it perfectly normal to hide their happiness regardless of how they feel.