Perspectives of Wellbeing Across Four Cultures: Australia, India, Chile, and Russia

Abstract

One of the challenges of settling on a universal definition of wellbeing is the significant cultural differences that influence one’s judgement about what it means to be well. This qualitative study investigated how adults conceptualise and experience wellbeing across four cultures, distinguished by differing social, political, and religious norms. We conducted interviews with 41 English speaking participants from Australia, India, Chile, and Russia, discussing the distinct dimensions that make up their wellbeing, including the psychological (e.g., perception), social (e.g., relational connections), emotional (e.g., how people perceive their emotional states in relation to wellbeing), spiritual (e.g., sense of meaning and worldviews), and expectation (e.g., resources required for optimal wellbeing) dimensions. Findings indicated the universal importance of social connectedness with others, happiness, and practices that nurture one’s physical and psychological health. There were cultural differences in how participants defined happiness and in the perceived importance of spiritual practices. The findings provide further insights into how wellbeing is understood and practiced across different cultures.

1. Introduction

Subjective wellbeing has been conceptualised and defined in various ways, but its importance as an outcome that people desire in life is clear (Layard & De Neve, 2023). Wellbeing has been studied across multiple disciplines, including psychology, economics, health, and architectural design. With some notable exceptions (e.g., Diener et al., 1985; Layard & De Neve, 2023), wellbeing is a multidimensional construct that includes both hedonic (e.g., the presence of positive affect and the lack of negative affect) and eudaimonic (e.g., the life well lived) notions of happiness (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Physical, emotional, psychological, cognitive, social, and spiritual wellbeing dimensions have been identified in the literature, through both quantitative and qualitative studies (e.g., Huang et al., 2022; Maulana et al., 2018; Rojas Perez et al., 2022). There has been ongoing scholarly debate around how to best conceptualise wellbeing in the pursuit of a universal framework, as well as subsequent pathways for people to achieve wellbeing (Bickenbach, 2015; Saracci, 1997), with little consensus as to the definition of wellbeing, or even if it is “well-being” or “wellbeing” (Kern et al., 2020).

One reason why a universal framework remains elusive is that wellbeing definitions and practices differ across cultures. The values, worldviews, and traditions of a culture influence how one determines their experiences of wellbeing (Maulana et al., 2018). As Huang et al. (2022) put it, wellbeing can be ‘shaped, interpreted, and experienced by one’s culture, upbringing, experiences in life, and perceptions of those experiences’ (p. 82). Successful interventions that aim to build wellbeing necessarily begin with a wellbeing framework that aligns with the culture of concern. This means that it is important to conduct studies in and between different cultures, identifying both the similarities and differences. Further, qualitative designs are helpful to elicit culturally influenced elements that might be missed using a purely quantitative design. Thus, this research qualitatively investigated how adults conceptualise and experience wellbeing across four different cultures, distinguished by differing social, political, and religious norms.

1.1. Wellbeing Across Cultures

Research that has explored wellbeing across cultures has identified several key variables that consistently relate positively to higher levels of reported wellbeing, including higher levels of wealth per capita, social autonomy, greater human rights, and education (Diener et al., 1995). Indeed, building upon studies that have identified conditions that promote wellbeing, countries such as Bhutan have developed wellbeing indices that identify the extent to which the social and economic conditions of the culture are sufficient to support individual flourishing. Whilst such research provides insight into the basic societal factors that best allow people to thrive at a societal level, it does not provide nuance around how people may conceptualise or experience wellbeing within their specific culture. Therefore, as noted by Joshanloo et al. (2021), a person’s propensity to flourish and experience optimal wellbeing depends ‘in part on the individual’s ability to live in accordance with the values and practices emphasised in one’s culture’ (p. 675).

Further research reinforces this point, suggesting wellbeing and its attainment is to be cultivated by one’s surrounding environment and subsequent perceptions (Kern et al., 2020). Cross-cultural studies exploring how differing cultures perceive wellbeing have often distinguished between cultures that pursue wellbeing via eudaimonic versus hedonistic pathways (Disabato et al., 2016; Delsignore et al., 2021; Henderson & Knight, 2012). Contemporary Western notions of wellbeing are primarily hedonistic in their approach, in so far as they tend to abide by conceptualisations that include the absence and presence of certain emotional experiences, as well as the absence of negative physical health symptoms (Henderson & Knight, 2012; Layard & De Neve, 2023). Delsignore et al. (2021) suggests that Eastern cultures favour more eudaimonic approaches to wellbeing, centred on pursuing a sense of spirituality and social connectedness. In such cultures, positive emotions and pleasures are considered too temporary and peripheral to be the criterion against which wellbeing is measured (Joshanloo, 2014).

With the predominant Western focus on hedonic aspects of wellbeing, and the Eastern focus on predominantly eudaimonic views of wellbeing, Western cultures are theorised to place greater emphasis on resources that can provide them with life’s pleasures when compared with Eastern cultures (Suh & Oishi, 2002). Thus, a further consideration important to understanding wellbeing across cultures is the necessary resources people believe they need to function optimally. People who live in Western environments are understood to place a heightened focus on personal needs, achievement, autonomy, freedom, and materialistic values as ways to enhance wellbeing (Davey & Rato, 2012). Indeed, research shows that as a society’s average income increases, so to do perceptions around what resources and material items are needed for one’s basic needs to be met (Cummins, 2000; Diener et al., 1995). It is of course probable that the more accessible nature of these factors in wealthier contexts versus developing ones is likely to exacerbate people’s desires for them. For instance, in some Western countries such as Australia, home ownership is perceived as an important milestone to reach optimal levels of wellbeing (Foye et al., 2018), whereas in Latin American countries such as Chile, having the resources necessary to be able to support one’s family and fulfil family roles is favoured (Rojas Perez et al., 2022).

Some research on cultural variances of wellbeing cites the social orientations of individualism and collectivism as an additional distinction between how different cultures may pursue wellbeing (Maulana et al., 2018; Suh & Oishi, 2002). Individualistic cultures such as the US, the UK, and Australia are understood as contexts that support self-reliance, the pursuit of personal goals, and the freedom to make independent life decisions, while collectivistic cultures such as China, Indonesia, and India emphasise group membership and loyalty over and above individual needs (Triandis & Gelfand, 1998). Specific to wellbeing, it is theorised that individualistic cultures value hedonistic elements more strongly than collectivistic cultures, who contrastingly tend to favour values such as ‘harmony, justice, truth, wisdom, and goodness’ as important facets of wellbeing (Joshanloo et al., 2021, p. 678). Collectivistic environments also tend to consider social engagement and connectedness to community as important aspects of wellbeing, whereas individualistic environments are more likely to be dismissive of the social elements of wellbeing (Humphrey et al., 2023). Notably, most of the theoretical models of wellbeing that have been established in the literature come from individualistic cultures, thus overpowering the models coming from collectivistic cultures (Maulana et al., 2018).

Maulana and Khawaja (2022) posit that a large body of the research on conceptualisations of wellbeing has been conducted in ‘Western, developed and industrialised countries’, and therefore has drawn on prevailing Western values such as individualism as well as hedonic ideals to both frame and measure wellbeing (p. 4). Such research subsequently draws on ideas of secularism, personal freedoms, comforts, as well as economic-related factors to capture notions of wellbeing. And yet research conducted outside of Western contexts shows differing factors and in turn conclusions regarding what defines wellbeing. As identified by Maulana and Khawaja (2022), the importance of one’s family, religious experiences, as well as supporting the needs of one’s community have all been found to be strongly related with quality of life and wellbeing in non-Western populations. Research has thus critiqued these ‘Westernised’ approaches to wellbeing, and their neglect to capture the broader aspects of wellbeing. As Brailovskaia et al. (2022) write, ‘Many of the available cross-cultural comparisons are based on observed scores on multi-item scales. However, the validity of such scales depends on the assumption that people from different cultural groups respond to the items in the same way. This assumption can be statistically tested via measurement invariance’ (p. 1381).

These cultural distinctions in wellbeing have been frequently captured by means of large-scale surveys and cross-cultural quantitative data. However, as Fattore et al. (2019) note, qualitative research allows for an ‘alternative source of knowledge’ to the prevailing numerical data on wellbeing and subsequently provide ‘conceptual and theoretical insights’ into how wellbeing is conceptualised and experienced in differing cultural environments (pp. 1–2). Campos and Sanchez Hernandez (2022) further advocate for a qualitative approach, concluding in their commentary on wellbeing that ‘encouraging the use of methodological approaches that span the quantitative to the qualitative is the best path forward to a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of the psychological aspects of well-being’ (p. 23). Studies that have utilised a qualitative approach generally include interviews with participants from one specific culture (e.g., Huang et al., 2022; Maulana et al., 2018; Rojas Perez et al., 2022). We aim to build on these studies by conducting interviews with participants from multiple cultural backgrounds, with the intention of enabling immediate cross-cultural comparisons in our understanding of wellbeing.

1.2. The Current Study

Due to these distinctions between how different cultures perceive and pursue wellbeing, there remains ambiguity regarding how wellbeing is understood across cultures. This has given rise to ‘blurred’ and ‘overly broad’ definitions of wellbeing’ (Forgeard et al., 2011, p. 81). As such there has been a particular neglect in the task of better defining the essential features of psychological wellbeing (Ryff, 1989, p. 1069), especially which features are universal and which are culturally-specific. Furthermore, as Biswas-Diener (2022) writes, when investigating wellbeing, including data collection that centres on area-specific ‘definitions and understandings of wellbeing’ can add important cultural insights. He adds that collecting qualitative data on this topic allows researchers to: ‘include more sensitivity to cultural contexts’ (p. 23). Drawing on these recommendations, we seek here to advance a deeper understanding of the broader cultural frameworks of wellbeing and how it is conceptualised within differing cultural environments within participants’ own voices. To do this, we conducted qualitative interviews with 41 English speaking participants of Australian, Indian, Chilean, and Russian citizenship, aiming to provide a deeper and more nuanced perspective of how differing cultures conceptualise wellbeing. To be able to make comparisons across cultures, considering that the language that is used can influence conceptualisations of wellbeing (Huang et al., 2022), all interviews were conducted in English. These countries represent distinct cultural norms from one and another, inclusive of differing philosophical, religious, and political norms, while also representing variations in economic development and social orientations. For example, specific to dimensions of individualism/collectivism—a distinction often used to draw comparisons across cultures—according to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model (Hofstede et al., 2010), these countries represent a broad cross-section ranging from highly collectivistic (Chile) to highly individualistic (Australia), as well as more in between (Russia and India) cultures.

These countries are also representative of a highly Western culture (Australia), a South Asian culture (India), as well as distinct Latin American (Chile) and Eurasian (Russia) cultures, thus providing for meaningful contrasts to be made relevant to cross-cultural understandings of wellbeing.

Our research was exploratory, however we generally expected that the cultures understood as been high in collectivistic traits (India and Chile; Hofstede et al., 2010) would more strongly define wellbeing via social and spiritual elements, whereas the more individualistic nations (Australia and Russia; Hofstede et al., 2010) would define wellbeing via more psychological and emotional aspects, by way of feelings of positive affect.

2. Material and Methods

We conducted semi-structured interviews (N = 41) that took approximately 20 min with Australians (n = 12), Indians (n = 12), Chileans (n = 10), and Russians (n = 7). The inclusion criteria were that participants had to be a citizen of the relevant country, had lived within that country for 5 years or more, and were over the age of 18. Whilst of varying sizes, our samples relative to the four cultures focused on were deemed sufficient to identify themes within groups which could then be used to make meaningful comparisons. Given the nature of our research aims, our data collection and analysis processes were undertaken via a ‘constructivist’ approach, that seeks to understand data from the perspective of how participants understand the world they live in (Creswell, 2013). As such, our sampling approach for each cultural group was intentionally broad, as our focus was on enabling the most comprehensive and valid representation of the data, while offering a holistic view of individual rather than universal realities (Boyland, 2019).

The semi-structured interview aimed to encourage a balance between the participant relating their experiences and steering the conversation towards the research question. The interview questions, purposely broad in nature, aimed to ascertain how participants defined wellbeing within their own lives, and in turn allow for an exploration of comparisons between the cultural groups included within the study. Similarly, given the cross-cultural nature of our sample, we drew on a broad array of question groups, based around what previous literature has proposed regarding differing conceptualisations of wellbeing across cultures. To construct our interview guide, we drew in part on the work of Rojas Perez et al. (2022) and their interviews with Latinx immigrants on wellbeing, as well as the work of Maulana et al. (2018) and their interviews exploring Indonesian participants perspectives of wellbeing, by including questions within the domains of the psychological (e.g., perception on what makes up wellbeing), social (e.g., the importance of relational and community connections to wellbeing), spiritual (e.g., sense of meaning, religious faith and worldviews and their importance to wellbeing), and cultural expectations for wellbeing (e.g., what resources are necessary to achieve optimal wellbeing). The questions centred on emotional needs (e.g., how people perceive their emotional states in relation to wellbeing) were created via drawing on the theoretical work of Suh and Oishi (2002) who describe the overemphasis on happiness in Western contexts specific to its link to wellbeing; thus, we included questions on the importance participants placed on happiness specific to their wellbeing, as well as how they oriented towards their negative emotions drawing on the hedonic/eudemonic wellbeing frameworks. The work of Rojas Perez et al. (2022) and Maulana et al. (2018) helped guide the creation of our questions specific to the perception, social, and spiritual domains.

2.1. Participants

Participants were aged between 18 and 60 (M = 32.22, SD = 10.18). The sample comprised 25 individuals who identified as female and 16 who identified as male (Australian: M men = 6, women = 6; Indian: men = 9, women = 3; Chile: men = 2, women = 8; and Russian: men = 2, women = 5). A total of 27 participants worked full time, 5 worked part time, 7 were studying full time, and the remaining 2 participants were unemployed and not studying.

2.2. Procedure

The research study was approved by a University Human Research Ethics Committee (Approval No. 2022-111). Participants were largely recruited via social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram). Recruitment adverts specified that participants must be over 18, that the study was looking for participants with an Australian, Indian, Chilean, or Russian background, and that the interviews would take place in English, via an online platform. Interested participants then responded to the advertisement by emailing the researcher with the email address stated on the advert. They were then emailed the plain language statement and consent form, which outlined the research purpose, the voluntary nature of the research, risk/benefits, as well as participants privacy and confidentiality.

2.3. Design and Analysis

The interviews were audio-taped, transcribed, and read several times to gain a comprehensive understanding of the participants responses. In our analysis, we followed the thematic analysis approach described by Braun and Clarke (2012), a method of data analysis that entails analysing, identifying, and reporting on themes and patterns. This thematic analysis was informed by a social constructivist framework, a data collection and analysis approach that aims to understand how individuals construct knowledge in their lives, while acknowledging that each participant constructs reality differently (Boyland, 2019). Our thematic analysis was guided by the core research questions of how participants from Australian, Indian, Chilean, and Russian cultural backgrounds conceptualise and cultivate wellbeing in their lives.

Specifically, our approach for data analysis consisted of firstly reading and familiarising ourselves with the data for each cultural group independently. This data was already categorised by questions into five dimensions: broad conceptualisations of wellbeing, social contributions to wellbeing, emotional needs, spiritual needs, and cultural expectations. Next, we read in depth the participant responses for each of the five topics across all interviews, one cultural group at a time, and within these topics identified themes for each cultural group. These themes were then reviewed, and where relevant, counted numerically to contrast the frequency of such responses across the different cultural groups. Themes were then reported in our findings section by a textual indication of their prevalence within the relevant cultural group, as well as by quotes supporting them. These themes then formed the basis for our results for each specific cultural group and are subsequently contrasted between groups throughout our Section 3 and Section 4. The findings of our analysis are presented below, structured into five main sections aligned with the identified dimensions.

3. Results

3.1. Broad Conceptualisations of Wellbeing

Two questions were used to capture participants’ perception and cultivation of wellbeing: ‘What does good wellbeing look like to you?, and ‘If any, what activities and practices do you engage in to assist in maintaining your wellbeing, for example: physically, mentally, spiritually?’.

Australian participants largely reported ‘happiness’ and ‘health’ as the key cornerstones of what wellbeing looked like to them. For example, one participant commented: ‘Good wellbeing looks like feeling happy and healthy within myself, and having balance in my life’ (Australian, 25-year-old female). Other Australian participants elaborated on facets such as ‘enjoying life’, ‘comfort’, and having basic needs met as important to their conceptualizations of wellbeing: ‘Enjoying yourself and your life and doing what makes you happy’ (Australian, 25-year-old female), and ‘Good wellbeing to me is being I suppose happy, its being fed, having somewhere warm to sleep and not being stressed’ (Australian, 24-year-old male). The Australian sample frequently mentioned exercise, their hobbies, and some form of socialisation as ways they nurtured their wellbeing. For instance, a participant noted: ‘I like to go to the gym a few days a week just to keep my body healthy’ (Australian, 24-year-old male). Additionally, a smaller group of participants reported social relationships as important in maintaining their wellbeing. Often, however, they did so specific to ways that positively impact them, rather than positively impacting others; for example, as one participant shared, ‘I like to debrief with friends and my family to get things off my chest’ (Australian, 24-year-old female).

The Indian participants gave more holistic responses for their conceptualisations of wellbeing, mentioning physical, mental, spiritual, and social health. As one participant stated,

‘I would like to say that one has to be completely fit in four aspects which I believe that one has to be physically fit, mentally fit, spiritually fit and financially fit and if one is ok in all these four aspects, it is more in a good way’

(Indian, 34-year-old male).

Another noted:

‘Good wellbeing is as a human being we should be physically, mentally, and socially sound, we have a good purpose, and it’s all about good wellbeing. If one person is living healthy mentally, physically and has a good social life you can say he has overall good wellbeing’

(Indian, 35-year-old male).

The Indian participants largely mentioned activities specific to fostering their ‘spiritual’ wellbeing as important in maintaining their wellbeing. These included practicing their Sikh or Hindu faiths, inclusive of time in prayer and devotion, as well as engaging in mediation and yoga.

Similar to the Indian participants, the Chilean participants largely conceptualised wellbeing in a holistic manner. For instance, one participant shared the following:

‘It looks like…like feeling healthy, like physically, and emotionally, and socially as well. It’s a combination of… I’ll say also spiritually, but not in a religious way. It’s a combination of feeling well most of the time and kind of being able to balance your life in terms of time management, work, social life, family, yeah and mental health stuff’

(Chilean, 31-year-old male).

Happiness was also a consistent theme, as was ‘stability and security’, and feelings of freedom. The participants mentioned exercise, engaging in hobbies such as music or dancing, as well as meditation as important activities they engage in for maintaining their wellbeing.

The Russian participants largely spoke of balance, emphasising for instance that ‘there’s a balance in work and friendships/relationships’ (Russian, 32-year-old female). Another participant noted:

‘For me it’s important to balance both like career and family, so in general I suppose that it’s about comfortable mental health, for me being comfortable is about self-organisation, like organisation of my potential, interesting job, good friendly relationships and time with my family and friends and wholeness as well. So life should be interesting and comfortable’

(Russian, 31-year-old female).

The Russian participants frequently spoke of physical exercise, mindfulness meditation, as well as in small cases religion, as their key means of fostering wellbeing; as one participant shared specific to the importance of their faith, ‘I am Russian orthodox, so we have icons around the house, just to connect me to my religion, I also wear a cross as well to keep me safe, I also have a cross in my car too’ (Russian, 32-year-old female).

3.2. Social Contributions

The next few questions examined the extent to which social relationships contributed to participants’ sense of wellbeing, as well as how influential one’s attachment to community was to their wellbeing. Participants across cultures universally shared that maintaining social relationships was important for their sense of wellbeing. As one Indian participant stated, ‘Yes, definitely. Relationships are always a vital part of your wellbeing’ (Indian, 30-year-old male), while one Australian shared: ‘yes definitely, I feel like it’s so important to have a good network of friends and family that you can see on a regular basis or at least talk to on a regular basis, just to sort of have support in life’ (Australian, 25-year-old female).

Responses to how important one’s community was to participants’ sense of wellbeing were similarly universally important across the Indian, Russian, and Chilean samples; however, for the Australian sample, responses around this importance were mixed. For the Australian participants, only some identified co2mmunity as being relevant to their wellbeing, and even then, there was often hesitation in doing so. As one participant shared, ‘yeah I guess so, I don’t really know if I have a community that I feel like I’m a part of, but I guess generally, yes’ (Australian, 25-year-old female). Other participants were firmer in discounting this: ‘not personally, because we don’t like where we live and the community, but I’m sure it would affect some people’ (Australian, 28-year-old female).

Indian participants universally noted that community involvement was a significant aspect that made up wellbeing. For instance, one participant shared: ‘We believe in celebrating our joy and sorrow with others. Generally, we don’t like loneliness. So we have a strong faith to build relationships with neighbours.’ (Indian 35-year-old male).

Chilean responses consistently pointed to community involvement. As one respondent shared, ‘Yeah definitely, being part of a community, I think is very important in terms of wellbeing. Having the feeling that you belong and having cultural similarities as well.’ (Chilean, 31-year-old female).

Russian participants also expressed feelings of community to be an important aspect that made up wellbeing; as one participant shared,

‘Yes it’s very important like the people that are around us they have a lot of influence around how we think and how comfortable we feel in this environment, and if you’re in safe community with good people and its good and calm it affects you a lot, because we are social animals and I suppose it’s a level of this primitive instincts that are inside us and in a friendly and supportive community you automatically feel better’

(Russian, 31-year-old female).

Another shared on this importance specific to the implications it can have for social behaviours and norms: ‘I guess you could say that Russians have much less boundaries than in a western country, because we just come into each other’s house sometimes no call, just knock, and sometimes stay for multiple days’ (Russian, 28-year-old male).

3.3. Emotional Needs

The next set of questions gauged how emotions related to participants sense of wellbeing. Here, participants were first asked how important feelings of happiness were to their overall sense of wellbeing, and then they were asked whether feelings such as sadness or disappointment affect their wellbeing in any way, and if so how. Feelings of happiness were universally seen as important to participants wellbeing across the four cultural groups, with happiness consistently labelled as ‘very important’. There were distinctions in how participants viewed their negative emotional experiences, however, with the Australian participants more dismissive of these, while the Indian, Chilean, and Russian participants more accepting of them.

Specific to the importance happiness played in their wellbeing, one Australian participant elaborated that ‘It’s very important, I feel like having a day where you don’t feel happy just makes you feel all that more unhappy’ (Australian, 25-year-old female). Another shared: ‘very important, I feel like if you’re not happy then, yeah, you just need to be happy otherwise it’s sad… If you’re sad then you’ll just be in a bad vibe, a bad mood’ (Australian, 24-year-old female). Some Australian participants also expressed happiness and wellbeing as the same construct; for example, ‘it’s like probably 99% of it (wellbeing)’ (Australian, 24-year-old male), and ‘happiness and wellbeing go hand in hand’ (Australian, 58-year-old male). The absence of negative emotions was also a frequent response in the Australian participants’ overall sense of wellbeing; as one respondent shared, ‘to me sadness is the opposite of happiness and happiness is like the reason for wellbeing, or the main contributor’ (Australian, 24-year-old male).

Indian participants similarly resounded in advocating happiness as an important aspect of wellbeing, albeit defining happiness through a slightly differing lens than the Australian participants, in that there was a focus on the social nature of happiness in their responses. For example, one participant noted that ‘We have to first give some five to six moments to someone to be happy, and you can be a joyful and cheerful for the whole day. So, it is very important to share such moments in daily life’ (Indian 34-year-old male). Another elaborated that

‘Happiness is something a person must feel in order to live a happy life… and you know happiness comes from the people surrounding us… So, according to me happiness is a must in order to live a happy life for a person living anywhere in the world’

(Indian, 22-year-old male).

The Indian participants also gave responses that indicated a more adaptive and philosophical approach to the Australian participants in their perceptions of their negative emotional states, with for instance one participant sharing:

‘Yes. Feeling of disappointment, sadness, they are very important for any human being’s wellbeing. According to me these are also very important like in our society, some wise people say suffering is a medicine, suffering is like medicine for any man… you analyse your wellbeing, your social structure, then you come back and face the life with more power so’

(Indian, 35-year-old male).

Another shared:

‘I feel the process of acceptance, and I am more accepting towards sadness and uncertain situations, so it doesn’t bother me much nowadays, because I feel that it is part of our life because one has to balance happiness and sadness. It is the other side of the coin’

(Indian, 35-year-old male).

Chilean participants were generally more reserved in their responses, indicating happiness was an important component of wellbeing, but not necessarily attainable. For instance, one participant shared:

‘I feel sometimes this idea of like being happy every, every day is not impossible, but not so real. I mean, like, I do believe that you can feel good that you can like be happy, but this idea of like this over overwhelming happiness, like you just like, I don’t know.’

(Chilean, 28-year-old female).

Along these lines, another participant shared specific to the role happiness and positive emotions played in making up their wellbeing: ‘They are important, but I don’t think they are at the base of wellbeing. Happiness is like any other feeling, they come and go, like sadness.’ (Chilean, 31-year-old female). The Chilean participants also generally were quite adaptive in how they interpreted their negative emotions:

‘I let those emotions come through. I think it is part of recognising my emotions, which means, it helps me to recognise when I do feel better and what do I have to do to get better, which means I have to let them in’

(Chilean, 31-year-old female).

For the Russian participants, happiness was similarly of ‘high importance’; as one participant shared, ‘It’s very important… it’s something that you should try and maintain no matter the situation you are in, so yes it’s important to feel happy’ (Russian, 31-year-old female). But again, some made the distinction in how they defined this happiness:

‘I wouldn’t say happiness is like the experience of like high or joy or whatever, to me happiness is more a state of acceptance of the present to which the past and the future matter less… Happiness of course matters to me a lot, but I would say my definition, it’s more of a mindfulness, that’s more my definition of happiness’

(Russian, 28-year-old male).

The Russian participants were also largely accepting of their negative emotions, touching on these as being nothing but fleeting experiences. As one such respondent shared, ‘I understand that my sad mood is just for a short time and then I feel better’ (Russian, 24-year-old female). Another noted that ‘I’m able to just experience negative emotions quite efficiently, so I personally quite enjoy experiencing all emotions. Like even if its negative its interesting for me to go through’ (Russian, 27-year-old female); and another noted that ‘I just experience [negative emotions], … everything is temporary and this sadness and happiness it’s a temporary condition and has life lessons with it’ (Russian, 31-year-old female).

3.4. Spiritual Needs

The next set of questions focused on whether participants associated a particular religious or spiritual practice to their sense of wellbeing, as well as whether they felt they had a strong sense of meaning in their lives, and whether or not that contributed to their sense of wellbeing. Responses here were mixed, with the Indian sample indicating their spiritual practices as essential to their wellbeing, somewhat related as with the Russian sample, and completely unrelated as per the Australian and Chilean samples. While feelings of life’s meaning and purpose were frequently expressed by the Chilean and Indian participants and also commonly linked to their wellbeing, this connection was much less evident for the Russian and Australian participants.

The majority of Australian participants did not associate religion with their sense of wellbeing: ‘I don’t have any religious practices’ (Australian, 24-year-old female), with this even so if participants did uphold a religious faith: ‘I’m Catholic, but I wouldn’t say that contributes anything to my wellbeing’ (Australian, 24-year-old female). Another participant gave greater context to this:

‘I’m not a spirit-religious person at all, I guess I’m agnostic, like I don’t believe there’s no God, but I don’t know for sure there is a God, so I’m sort of somewhere in the middle. I wouldn’t say I’m particularly spiritual, but I think that I have a sort of life philosophy which gives my life sort of meaning and direction, and yeah if I didn’t have that I think I’d feel a bit lost and that would um impact my wellbeing negatively’

(Australian, 25-year-old male).

Specific to what made up their sense of meaning and purpose and their role in impacting participant wellbeing, Australian participants consistently pointed to ‘happiness’ as what framed this throughout their responses: ‘I think I have a purpose, and I think it’s just to live a happy and healthy life’ (Australian, 24 year-old-female), and ‘I feel in myself that I have a responsibility and that I have a duty to myself to be happy’ (Australian, 24 year-old-female). Few, however, were emphatic in linking these to their wellbeing.

Indian participants were unanimous in their religion and sense of spirituality as serving as an important part of their lives, as well as their wellbeing:

‘Yes, spirituality is a state having a good connection to God so, I strongly believe, and I keep doing a pray to God whether I am sad or happy because it gives a peaceful life, and I’m also going to a gurudwara whenever I have a free time.’

(Indian, 26-year-old female).

Another shared:

‘Yes. I’m a very religious person… I don’t meditate. But I have my own ways to talk to my God. And he gives me answers in his way. So, I know that whenever I’m down or whatever, he is there for me, so it does help in my wellbeing like, yeah, it’s the most important thing for me, I think’

(Indian, 38-year-old female).

Indian participants frequently linked their sense of life meaning to their spirituality and believed that meaning and purpose were critical pathways to wellbeing. For instance, one participant noted:

‘Strong purpose makes your life easier. Because when you are at a certain level of life, you have job you have house you have car then you have to decide what do you want to do in the future? If you have no goal, no planning or no strong purpose then you will maybe disappointed or feeling with feeling of sadness’

(Indian, 34-year-old male).

Another participant noted:

‘I think everyone, during the course of this journey on this planet… planet earth, I would say that we tend to find a purpose and without purpose the life is miserable. And I believe that my purpose at the moment is to take care of my family, and which is more or less my responsibility, but the bigger purpose of my life is to serve the wisdom of my spiritual gurus which is to help and support the community and use my sadness to serve. Whatever the community has given me I have to return it to the double of it in terms of joy and happiness’

(Indian, 34-year-old male).

Chilean participants largely did not associate with having any religious beliefs or practices and consequently deemed these factors to be unrelated to their wellbeing. As one participant explained: ‘Not really. I’m not a religious person, but no, I just go with what is happening now. I don’t practice anything’ (Chilean, 39-year-old female). The Chilean participants were however generally more elaborate in how meaning and purpose applied to their sense of wellbeing; as one such participant described:

‘I think if you feel you are doing something deep for the world, that contributes to your wellbeing. It is doing transcendent things. If you feel like you are doing something, with sense and contributing to your neighbourhood, or the country you are living in, you feel important, you feel part of them and this impacts your wellbeing’

(Chilean, 44-year-old female).

Russian participants gave mixed responses on their religious stance; however, numerous participants shared on engaging in particular practices and traditions around the Orthodox faith. One such participant shared that:

‘By having the religious icons in my car and in my home I feel a sense of safety and that I’m connected to God, and especially by having my cross around my neck I feel like I’m always safe and God is always watching over me whenever I get in the car or go out on the weekend.’

(Russian, 32-year-old female).

Russian participants were largely dismissive of identifying a personal sense of meaning in their lives; as one such participant shared, ‘So on the one hand I try and plan only ahead for a short period of my life, because everything is so unpredictable’ (Russian, 38-year-old male).

3.5. Cultural Expectations for Optimal Wellbeing

The last set of questions were designed to elicit perspectives on what resources participants deemed relevant to their wellbeing. They were asked: What, if any, resources do you think are necessary for a good life? And whether they thought there was a level of annual income that was necessary to achieve good health and wellbeing, and if so, what roughly would that be? Financial stability as well as having one’s basic needs met was a consistent theme for supporting wellbeing across cultures, with this theme particularly pertinent for the Australian, Indian, and Russian participants, while the Chilean participants’ responses were more focused on the notion of basic needs being met.

Australian participants placed a strong emphasis on securing adequate finances, as well as having one’s basic needs met as resources deemed necessary to achieve good wellbeing. Participants universally stated the importance of maintaining a consistent income and the flexibility this offers as important for maintaining wellbeing. As one Australian participant shared, ‘Income plays a big role, just from the fact of being able to do the things you want to do’ (Australian, 25-year-old male). Another participant noted ‘I think unfortunately money, and access to things like universal healthcare, and community services, and just yeah the basics. Like access to, you know, healthy food and clean drinking water and all the things that we’re lucky to have in Australia (Australian, 25-year-old-female). The Australian participants pointed towards the importance of a consistent income; as one such participant explained, ‘For me, I feel like my happiness can come from having the funds to do things, like experiences or like buy things that I really enjoy’ (Australian, 25-year-old female). Another participant added the importance of money in mitigating experiences of negative affect: ‘if you’re not worried about money then you’re a lot happier’ (Australian 28-year-old female).

A typical response from the Indian participants elaborated on the importance of adequate finances in fostering their wellbeing: ‘The first and foremost is one has to be, you know, financially fit as well. To be financially fit one has to be physically and mentally fit because all these things are interconnected’ (Indian, 34-year-old male). Indian participants also pointed to the importance of having a consistent income and were specific in terms of what this ideal amounted to. For instance, one participant noted ‘In India I think what I am earning is ok, so the rough idea I would say minimum… 6 lakh annual rupees is bare minimum’ (Indian, 30-year-old male). Another participant shared: ‘It depends individual to individual and the place of living. Like, for me, I’m living in a normal village of Punjab. So, I can say roughly five to six lakh per annum is enough to achieve what you want’ (Indian, 35-year-old male).

Chilean participants responses were more focussed on the notion of basic needs being met ahead of money. For example, one participant shared: ‘Well the basic needs for me are water, warmth, to know that I have a roof over my head; money, because you need things to eat; love from people, from your friends and family’ (Chilean, 39-year-old female). Another noted:

‘Community, definitely; good food, relationships, very important, mixed with community but with family… personal relationships. I’m thinking of Maslow now… of course we need to be safe, I don’t know if in that order, but there are things we need in order to live, and I think education’

(Chilean, 28-year-old female).

Chilean participants were more reserved in their responses regarding the connection between one’s annual income and wellbeing; as one respondent elaborated, ‘Lots of people have the minimum and are very happy, lots of people have a lot and they are not happy. We all are humans and have problems, but I think it is the way you see life, how you have been brought up.’ (Chilean, 39-year-old female). Another respondent added that

‘I don’t think I have a number, but I think it’s just life, like to be, to be right now. You know… you can have millions and millions and millions, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be here with us again tomorrow. You know? So yeah. For me, it’s being present, be here right now’

(Chilean, 36-year-old male).

Another shared that ‘I am a person that I like to live with just enough. I don’t like to accumulate and yeah, I grew up, we grew up in Chile, you know, it’s different, and yeah, we survive with whatever.’ (Chilean, 37-year-old male, city).

The Russian participants similarly shared the importance of material and financial items as an important accomplice to wellbeing: ‘Financial resources, I would prefer though spiritual resources, but my family is so important so I need to support my family. (Russian, 38-year-old male). Another shared:

‘Yes I think you needs things, I think I need things, I mean not everyone needs things but I think I do, and also there is good money to have good health insurance, to be able to travel wherever you want whenever you want, to have a nice apartment with a nice view, and good size otherwise you feel stuck and its sad’

(25-year-old female).

Russian participants did not specify an exact figure, as one respondent stated,

‘Money is very important, before I was another person, I went for more spiritual stuff, and money yes its important, but I never thought of money for just money, but then I had to change myself, and it’s painful to change like this’

(Russian, 38-year-old male).

Another reinforced this importance by describing money as a means to being happy:

‘In general, financial resources are important, people around you are important freedom is important, ability to have information, health system, different possibilities, to travel. As for me money is an instrument to get something, and I suppose actually one of the main resources is health as it’s really nice when you’re healthy and your able to enjoy life and do work’

(Russian, 31-year-old female).

4. Discussion

In this paper we examined how wellbeing is conceptualised across four cultures: Australia, India, Chile, and Russia. Findings indicated the universal importance that participants placed on the role of social connectedness with others, happiness, and practices to do with nurturing one’s physical and psychological health that fostered wellbeing. However, building on past cross-cultural findings (Brailovskaia et al., 2022; Joshanloo et al., 2021; Maulana et al., 2018), divergences emerged across cultures in the ways participants reported happiness relating to wellbeing, as well as the perceived importance spiritual practices and financial resources held for it.

Australian participants largely reported ‘happiness’ and positive health outcomes as the key cornerstones of how wellbeing looked to them. Such responses corroborate past findings indicating these facets as highly embedded in Western notions of wellbeing (Joshanloo et al., 2021). The Indian participants gave more holistic responses, frequently mentioning the importance of physical, mental, spiritual, and social health. Chilean responses identified similar themes, whereas the Russian participants prioritised ‘balance’, with these findings indicative again of the multi-dimensional nature of wellbeing and the importance of applying culturally diverse measures to capture it (Maulana et al., 2018).

Responses to how important one’s community was to participants sense of wellbeing were relatively consistent across the Indian, Chilean, and Russian participants, who pointed to the contribution of community as critical to their wellbeing. These findings are consistent with previous studies (e.g., Brailovskaia et al., 2022; Rojas Perez et al., 2022), which have also highlighted the importance of community connection to wellbeing in non-Western and Latin American societies. Australian participants were more dismissive of this however, indicating that whilst they felt community to be important, few expressed having much involvement within one. These responses align with the cultural dimension categorisations of Hofstede et al. (2010), indicating Australia to be highly individualistic and India, Chile, and Russia to be more collectivistic in their social preferences.

Across cultures, financial stability was a consistent theme for supporting wellbeing. Across both the Australian and Indian participants, a strong emphasis was placed on securing adequate finances, as well as having one’s basic needs met as necessary resources participants deemed necessary to achieve optimal wellbeing consistent with material approaches to wellbeing (Cummins, 2000). The Russian participants similarly shared on the importance of material and financial items as an accomplice to wellbeing, however with a sentiment again of balance, while Chilean participants responses were more focussed on the notion of basic needs being met, supporting past findings on Latin American samples (Rojas Perez et al., 2022).

As a whole, similar issues arose across cultures, but perspectives and approaches to addressing these issues differed. These distinctions included the way cultures saw spirituality relating to their wellbeing, ranging from a superstitious accomplice as with the Russian sample, to an essential facet as per the Indian sample, and unrelated as per the Australian and Chilean samples. Maulana et al. (2018) writes of the importance religion plays in fostering wellbeing for non-Western cultures versus Western ones, with our findings reinforcing this distinction and providing nuance to how participants from these differing cultural backgrounds situate religion and spirituality specific to their wellbeing.

Further, whilst universally viewed as an important aspect of wellbeing, the way in which happiness was conceptualised differed across cultures. The Australian and Russian samples were more hedonic in their descriptions, while a more eudaimonic perspective was expressed in the Indian and Chilean samples, findings that align with Joshanloo’s (2014) cross-cultural theorising on happiness and wellbeing. Participants responses to the way in which they viewed their negative emotional states and their impact on wellbeing also differed; the Russian, Chilean, and Indian participants were more adaptive in their perception of their negative emotional states, while the Australian sample were more dismissive, findings consistent with approaches to wellbeing in Western versus non-Western settings, whereby specific to the latter, ‘suffering and negative affect are seen as inevitable elements of life’ and can be ‘enabling, enriching, and necessary for developing virtues’ (Joshanloo et al., 2021, p. 678).

4.1. Implications

Cross-cultural theories of wellbeing acknowledge that wellbeing is a multi-dimensional concept, with aspects that may be differentially perceived and applied from culture to culture (Maulana et al., 2018). As Maulana et al. (2018) write, ‘Existing theories of wellbeing in a cross-cultural context acknowledge that some components of wellbeing may not be universal’, continuing to state that approaches to wellbeing need to be understood in ‘an appropriate socio-cultural context’ (p. 3147). Our findings build on these understandings, showing there were both similarities and differences in terms of the different cultures studied and their pathways to wellbeing. Based on the qualitative responses, Australian participants identified the importance of physical and ‘lifestyle’- centred approaches to wellbeing, inclusive of encouraging time for engaging in one’s hobbies. The Indian participants contrastingly identified a holistic approach to wellbeing, inclusive of pursuing spiritual practices. For the Chileans, their approach also involved lifestyle factors such as engaging in hobbies, as well as cultivating a sense of purpose, while the Russian participants highlighted the importance of strong social connections with others and a sense of community.

The extent to which interventions addressing these needs translate into increased levels of wellbeing is an important direction for future research. From a scholarship perspective, cross-cultural research on wellbeing has highlighted the need to employ ‘culturally sensitive’ and contextually appropriate responses to treating and understating the wellbeing of different population groups (Huang et al., 2022). Our findings build on past research indicating culturally specific approaches to wellbeing, by showing distinctions between core approaches to it across differing cultural settings, including individualistic/collectivist cultures, religious/non-religious cultures, and hedonic/eudemonic-centred cultures. Our findings strengthen the argument for breaking away from ‘universal’ and Western-centred approaches to wellbeing (Maulana et al., 2018) and instead acknowledging how differing socio-cultural environments shape conceptualisations and experiences of wellbeing (Brailovskaia et al., 2022).

4.2. Limitations and Future Directions

This study used a cross-sectional, self-reported design, such that associations over time are unknown. Interviews are personal in nature and bring deep insights into the participants’ perspectives, but bring biases in terms of both how the participant expresses themselves, as well as the possibility that questions in the interviews led participants to provide specific responses that align with the goals and hypotheses of the study. As with most qualitative studies, the sample size is relatively small and does not necessarily generalise to larger populations.

Despite these limitations, the study provides important insights into the experience of and pathways towards wellbeing across four cultures. This responds to calls for expanding wellbeing research across cultures (Lomas et al., 2021). Future studies might expand to additional cultures, confirm these findings through top-down quantitative studies, and test the extent to which the insights from these findings can inform cultural-specific interventions to improve wellbeing.

5. Conclusions

In this study we investigated how adults conceptualise and experience wellbeing across four different cultures (Australia, India, Chile, and Russia), distinguished by differing social, political, and religious norms. Our findings indicate both similarities and differences across cultures, reinforcing the need to adapt culturally appropriate approaches to supporting and measuring wellbeing across cultures as previously proposed by Biswas-Diener (2022). As Brailovskaia et al. (2022) write specific to their findings comparing wellbeing constructs between German and Chinese student samples, wellbeing may be ‘experienced’ differently in differing cultural contexts, making it ‘a culturally specific subjective experience’. The authors go on to advocate for the importance of qualitative research in addition to the use of established measures in enhancing the quality of cross-cultural wellbeing research. Aligning with third wave positive psychology perspectives (Kern et al., 2020; Lomas et al., 2021), these qualitative findings expand our understanding of how differing cultural groups conceptualise wellbeing as well as the pathways they pursue towards it. By being culturally sensitive and aware, practitioners, policy makers, and everyday people alike are better placed to support wellbeing across diverse cultures.