Well-Being and Cultures Perspectives from Positive Psychology [Hardcover]

This anthology focuses on empirical studies comparing cultures in relation to central positive psychological topics. The book starts out with an introductory chapter that brings together the main ideas and findings within an integrative perspective, based on a broad theoretical framework encompassing interdisciplinary and methodological issues. It gives special emphasis to some open issues in the theory and assessment of culture-related dimensions, and to the potential of positive psychology in addressing them. The introductory chapter is followed by two chapters that examine theoretical approaches and instruments developed to assess happiness and well-being across cultures. Following that examination, five chapters are devoted to the relationship between well-being, cultures and values. The second half of the book prominently investigates well-being across cultures in the light of socio-economic factors. This book shows that positive psychology, now officially well into its second decade, is providing still finer-grained perspectives on the diversity of cultures along with insights about our shared human nature, uniting us for better or worse. ?

Helping to broaden the intercultural understanding of positive psychology, this new collection assembles talented researchers working on key aspects of human life experience, combining theory, methodology and empiricism in papers from the 2010 ECPP in Denmark.

Chapter 1. Positive Psychology and cros-cultural research; Hans Henrik Knoop and Antonella Delle Fave.- Chapter 2. VIA Character Strenghts -Research and Practice: The First 10 Years; Ryan M. Niemiec.- Chapter 3. Addressing current challenges in cross-cultural measurement of well-being: The Pemberton Happiness Index; Carmelo Vazquez and Gonzalo Hervas.- Chapter 4. Comnunal values and individualism in our era of globalization: A comparative longitudinal study of different societies; Holde Eileen Nafstad and Erland Sand Bruer.- Chapter 5. The Relation olC+