Happiness is not as simple as it sounds.

Philosophers advise that the pursuit of happiness may be a misguided aspiration, and psychologists warn that illusory happiness achieved through denial can harm your health.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s World Happiness Report 2023 has perplexed many people with its surprising national rankings of what it termed “happiness.” 

Because this significant work has spawned many commentaries and much confusion, it awaits clarification.

Finns and Israelis have little in common yet are now doubly bonded: Both ranked in the top ten on “happiness” – Finland first and Israel fourth – and many in both lands are bewildered by those numbers. A Finn interviewed about the WHR wondered why she felt unhappy if Finns were supposed to be the world’s happiest, noting that they view themselves as a rather gloomy lot and not inclined to undue smiling. I heard a quip that an extrovert in Nordic countries stares at someone else’s shoes rather than his own. Native Israelis are known as sabras, desert cacti that are prickly on the outside but sweet on the inside. They also aren’t prone to excess smiling, as easily observed in tense faces and periodic outbursts during Jerusalem’s rush hour.

So, how do we understand these ratings? 

The explanation for this confusion is that the statistic used by the WHR did not measure happiness in the conventional sense of being emotionally happy. Its ranking was instead based on a question that addressed what is more accurately termed life satisfaction. The WHR asked more than 100,000 respondents in 137 countries to “evaluate their current life as a whole,” with 10 being the “best possible life” and 0 the “worst possible.” Evaluating one’s life “as a whole” is a broad concept that includes diverse factors open to interpretation, and emotional happiness may not be one of the factors. Commentators in Israel opined that the country’s high ranking was related less to positive emotion than to Israel offering a meaningful life. 

This conundrum about happiness can be clarified by examining the WHR data. Besides measuring life satisfaction, the WHR included subjective data about positive and negative emotions, including laughter, enjoyment, interest, worry, sadness, and anger. It also reported objective data about the quality of life, covering six categories of well-being: per capita GDP, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceived corruption. The “happiness” rankings did not include positive and negative emotions or quality-of-life measures, using those criteria only to understand the rankings better. 

The WHR addressed three aspects of happiness: Life Satisfaction, Emotional Happiness, and Quality of Life. Psychologist Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, established positive psychology as a scientific discipline. He noted that happiness results from a pleasurable life with more positive than negative emotions, an engaged life with many interests, or a meaningful life with a strong sense of purpose. The positive and negative affect data in the WHR, and directly address happiness as an emotional state rather than the multi-faceted life satisfaction measure. When positive and negative emotions are used, the rankings look very different from the life satisfaction rankings. 

Despite its high life satisfaction rank, Israel scored extremely low in positive emotions, 114^th out of 137 countries. This score is perilously close to veering into more negative than positive emotions, and thus an unhappy state. Israel’s positive emotion score is only slightly above Iran’s, and much lower than number-one Guatemala’s. Despite 75 years of miraculous growth and abundant sunshine, chronic strife understandably makes smiling infrequent. Israel did better in managing negative emotions, ranking 19^th, likely a function of resilience cultivated from a history of coping with adversity. Finland did well in positive emotions, ranking 26^th, and their negativity was also low, ranking 12^th, close to Israel’s. 

These rankings illustrate the importance of considering emotional happiness as distinct from life satisfaction. However, using positive or negative emotions alone is problematic. A country like Israel is low on positivity and low on negativity; Finland is also low on both, so Finns are, on-the-whole, happier than Israelis. To take this into account, psychologists have addressed this by developing a composite measure – the positive ratio – that captures the balance of positive and negative emotions in a single index. 

Using basic arithmetic, this ratio is computed as the percentage of positive emotions relative to the total of positive and negative ones. A country with a score of six on positive emotions and four on negative ones would have a positive ratio of 60 percent (6  [6 4] = 6  Israel’s positive ratio equals 72 percent, which ranks 52^nd in overall emotional happiness. Finland scored 80 percent, a ranking of 7th in emotional happiness. 

This distinction clarifies the confusion by showing that Israel is not the fourth-happiest nation, but the fourth most satisfied. The high satisfaction level reflects a country that affords its citizens, many of whom left comfortable surroundings, the most meaningful lives. Israel ranks at a moderate 52^nd in emotional happiness. Importantly, this rank is achieved not by feeling especially positive, but by keeping negative emotions low. Although Israelis may have warm hearts and manage negative emotions well, they are far from “happiest”, in terms of good cheer. 

Finland’s top ranking means it is the world’s most satisfied nation, and Finns’ emotional happiness rank of 8^th is also high. The difference between satisfaction and emotional happiness provides an explanation for those wondering why they don’t feel as happy as their high rank suggests. Although having more positive emotions than Israelis, Finland at 26th is not overflowing with positivity. They also boost their overall happiness by keeping their negative feelings at bay. Happiness experienced by not feeling negative is not quite the same as when it’s achieved by feeling positive. 

Distinguishing life satisfaction from emotional happiness yields other intriguing findings:

Among the top ten in life satisfaction, only Finland (1st), Iceland (3rd), Sweden (6th), and Switzerland (8th) were also top ten in emotional happiness. As noted, a more passionate Guatemala, first in positive emotion, is also high in negative ones and ranked 43^rd in life satisfaction. Taiwan ranked first in overall emotional happiness because the Taiwanese are high in positive and low in negative emotion, but ranked 27^th in life satisfaction. Kazakhstan, second in emotional happiness, ranked only 44^th in life satisfaction. 

The discrepancy between life satisfaction (typically dependent on the quality of life) and emotional happiness shows that happiness can be ”an inside job” not necessarily determined by life circumstances. Zimbabwe was fourth-lowest in life satisfaction but scored the same on emotional happiness as Israel and the United States, the latter two nations ranking near the top in life satisfaction. Kenya, Tanzania, and Sri Lanka were also emotional happiness overachievers considering their low life satisfaction rankings. These countries deserve recognition as positive transformers, feeling joyful despite many of their citizens’ dire living conditions. 

Other countries such as Malta, Serbia, and Brazil were negative transformers that scored lower in emotional happiness than nations with similar life satisfaction rankings. Political turmoil and threats to freedom in Serbia and Brazil contribute to this discrepancy. Malta's gloomy emotional state far below its life satisfaction rating is harder to understand. Steady Switzerland is a non-transformer, ranking eighth in life satisfaction and eighth in emotional happiness. For the realistic Swiss, it’s a simple equation: positive in, positive out–no transformation needed. Tragically, Afghanistan and Lebanon desperately need positive boosts but were non-transformers, achieving the lowest rankings in both life satisfaction and emotional happiness. Such low positive ratios in a clinical setting would indicate profound emotional disorders likely needing medication or hospitalization. 

Before packing your bags and moving to one of the “happiest” countries, consider what you value most: the security and contentment provided by a high quality of life, but less emotional intensity; or warm, smiling, expressive people who exude positive emotions but can also blow off negative steam; or a meaningful life of high purpose in which people may not smile as much as in your hometown. An expatriate from Zimbabwe living in Finland lamented seeing fewer of the smiles of her native country. During a recent visit to Dubai, I encountered such a glowing smile when chatting with a barista from Kenya, fourth from the bottom in life satisfaction (134^th), but somehow sustaining a respectably healthy level of emotional happiness (50^th).

I’m not moving, but I would love to visit those countries to discover their secret to transforming darkness into light, and to living with high levels of emotional happiness despite the lack of necessities associated with life satisfaction. Americans with a rosy life satisfaction rank of 15th and emotional happiness of 56^th can learn something from these less privileged but positive transformers.

The writer, a clinical psychologist and Ph.D., is a pioneer in positive psychology who, with John Gottman, developed one of the first scientific methods for measuring concurrent positive and negative states. This analysis is based on nearly 50 years of scientific research on the relationship between positive ratios and psychological well-being. In addition to scientific articles, he has published social commentaries in the Christian Science Monitor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jerusalem Post, the American Thinker, and others.

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