Are Israelis happy or just satisfied with life? - opinion

I mentioned to an American that Israel leaped into fourth place in the World Happiness Report (WHR), trailing the likes of Finland, Denmark and Iceland. He looked stunned and exclaimed, “Really?” I replied, “We’re saying the same thing here.”

Several Israelis whom I asked about how they understood this puzzling result said, “It’s our soul” and another, “It’s our strong sense of purpose.” This echoes Herb Keinon’s view in The Jerusalem Post (March 20) that Israel scored high because our dedication to Zionism or religious beliefs makes life here meaningful and satisfying.

Most happiness surveys are ambiguous about if they primarily measure life satisfaction or well-being, not emotional happiness. This leaves the question of whether Israelis are the fourth happiest in life satisfaction only or also in the conventional sense of emotional happiness. The bad news is that Israel is not quite as happy as we are satisfied with life.

How does one rank happiness?

The WHR ranked happiness using a single item that asked people to select a score from 0 being the “worst possible life” to 10 being the “best possible life.” The WHR and media headlines call this happiness, which should be termed life satisfaction.

No criteria were given to define best and worst, so respondents were free to base their rating on whatever they feel is important. The WHR suggests that the criteria influencing the best and worst responses are likely social support, income, health, life expectancy, generosity, absence of corruption and freedom; however, these were not included in the questionnaire.

Happiness is a broad term that can cause confusion. Martin Seligman, who helped establish Positive Psychology as a science, differentiated three types of happiness: living a pleasurable or emotionally happy life, defined as generally feeling more positive than negative emotions; an engaged life, defined as participating in interesting but not inherently meaningful activities, such as collecting stamps or playing football; and a meaningful life, defined as having a strong sense of purpose that makes life feel important and meaningful.

As noted, many in Israel likely gave high scores to the “best possible life” item because they believe life here is meaningful, with a deep feeling of social connection and belonging. But where do we rank regarding the emotionally happy life? The WHR included additional questions about affective or emotional happiness, using three positive emotions (laughter, enjoyment and interest) and three negatives (worry, sadness and anger).

On the positive emotion scale, Israel placed near the bottom at 114th out of 137 nations, only modestly more positive than Iran and much less positive than Guatemala, which was number one. The good news is that we also ranked very low in negative emotions, the 19th lowest in negativity out of 137, about the same level as the Scandinavian and Nordic nations that comprised seven out of the 10 most satisfied nations.

Since emotional happiness is a balance of positive and negative emotions, a combined score is the best way to compare differences in this type of happiness. Using positive or negative emotions alone can be misleading. Consider two nations, Yellow and Grey, which score equally high on positive emotions. Grey is high also on negative emotions, whereas Yellow is low on negatives. Taking positive and negative scores together, Yellow’s emotional state would be higher since Grey’s negativity would drag down its overall rating.

TO CAPTURE the mutual influence of both positive and negative emotions, psychologists employ a positive ratio, defined as the percentage of emotions that are positive. Using fourth-grade math (no fear, please), the positive ratio is calculated by dividing the positive score by the total positive plus negative score. If a nation scored 60 positives and 40 negatives, its positive ratio would be 60% (60/60 + 40 = 60/100 = 60%).

Israel’s positive ratio is 72.6%, which scientific studies have shown to be a normal positive mood state but not quite optimal. Finland, number one in overall life satisfaction, scored 80% on emotional happiness, which is in the optimal zone. Russia provides another interesting comparison. Although it ranked only 70th in life satisfaction, its positive ratio of 75.6% is higher than Israel’s.

Even more extreme, Zimbabwe has a positive ratio of 71%, virtually the same as Israel, but is among the lowest in life satisfaction at 134th. A lamentable comparison nation is Afghanistan, which has the lowest life satisfaction score in the world at 137th and the lowest hedonic happiness ratio of 24.6. Individuals I’ve treated with a happiness ratio this low are likely candidates for serious medication or psychiatric hospitalization.

You may be interested in the United States, which ranked 15th and had almost the same emotional happiness score as Israel, 71.2%. In order to understand what these emotional happiness scores mean, it’s important to look at both the ratio and the separate positive and negative scores alone.

Although the US and Israel had almost the same positive ratios, the US was higher than Israel in both positive emotion (.725 vs .569, respectively) and negative emotion (.280 vs .215). Again, it takes only simple math to see that these individual scores, while different, yield the same percentages.

By distinguishing life satisfaction from emotional happiness, we reduce the initial perplexity. Israel ranks fourth in life satisfaction, vaguely defined and normally but not optimally high in emotional happiness. The respectable emotional happiness level is achieved not so much because of high positive emotions (indeed, we are on the lower end of the spectrum) but more by holding negative feelings at bay.

Interestingly, Russia (99th in life satisfaction) also achieved a positive ratio of 75.6% by having fewer negative emotions. Israel and Russia have similar emotional happiness rankings and achieved them similarly. Both have moderately low positive emotion scores but also low negative ones.

Perhaps a history of coping with adversity cultivated a capacity to transform the negatives while wresting out at least moderate positivity. This certainly has been a necessity for Jewish survival and emotional health.

Israel is near the top of the world in one aspect of happiness: perceived life satisfaction or well-being. Our emotional happiness is healthy but has room to improve. Positive psychology informs us that increasing happiness involves lowering negative feelings and bolstering positives.

In Israel’s case, the future pursuit of happiness must focus more on increasing positive emotions than reducing the already low negative ones. Israel has a religious and cultural heritage of life-affirming positivity and optimism.

A scientific study found that Jewish liturgy is the most positive among world religions. May we build on this and be blessed with more simcha (joy), love of one’s brothers and sisters, kindness, gratitude and humor. Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate.

The writer, a clinical psychologist, is one of the pioneers in positive psychology who, with John Gottman, developed the first scientific method for measuring concurrent positive and negative states. This analysis is based on nearly 50 years of research on positive ratios. He can be reached at robsch77@gmail.com.