Authors
Maciej R Górski, Vlad Costin, Wijnand van Tilburg, Eric Raymond Igou, Mohsen Joshanloo, Boris Sokolov, Brian W Haas, Michael Harris Bond, Marta Roczniewska, Victoria Wai Lan Yeung, Biljana Gjoneska, Paul Shing-Fong Chan, M Azhar Hussain, Christin-Melanie Vauclair, Jiao Liu, Ángel Sánchez-Rodríguez, Aleksandra Buźniak, Farida Guemaz, Mahmoud Boussena, Nuha Iter, Olha Vlasenko, Vivian Miu-Chi Lun, Liman Man Wai Li, Nur Amali Aminnuddin, İdil Işık, Dieynaba Gabriel Ndiaye, Márta Fülöp, David Igbokwe, Mladen Adamovic, Ragna Benedikta Garðarsdóttir, Natalia Soboleva, Julien Teyssier, Fumiko Kano Glückstad, Joonha Park, Plamen Akaliyski, Grace Akello, Anna Almakaeva, Marwan Al-Zoubi, Laura Andrade, Petra Anić, Lily Appoh, Rasmata Bakyono-Nabaloum, Arno Baltin, Gergely Czukor, Patrick Denoux, Alejandra Domínguez Espinosa, Valentin El Sayed, Agustin Espinosa, Vladimer Gamsakhurdia, Magdalena Garvanova, Alin Gavreliuc, Katharina Henk, Naved Iqbal, Natalia Kascakova, Elmina Kazimzade, Agata Kocimska-Bortnowska, Nicole Kronberger, Mary Anne Lauri, J Hannah Lee, Xiaobin Lou, Alexander Malyonov, Arina Malyonova, Linda Mohammed, Fatma Mokadem, Magdalena Mosanya, Oriana Mosca, Elke Murdock, Katarzyna Myślińska-Szarek, Martin Nader, Danielle Ochoa, Ayu Okvitawanli, Mateusz Olechowski, Ewa Palikot, Zoran Pavlović, Iva Poláčková Šolcová, Md Reza A Rabby, Muhammad Rizwan, Ana Maria Rocha, Adil Samekin, Heyla Selim, Rosita Sobhie, Chien-Ru Sun, Morten Tønnessen, Claudio Torres, Kiều Thị Thanh Trà, Vladimir Turjačanin, Jorge Vergara-Morales, Arkadiusz Wasiel, Cai Xing, Belkacem Yakhlef, Jae-Won Yang, Eric Kenson Yau, June Chun Yeung, John Zelenski, Kuba Krys
Published in
Emotion (Washington, D.C.). Nov 12, 2026. Epub Nov 12, 2026.
Abstract
People tend to evaluate their lives as more meaningful when they experience more positive affect and less negative affect. However, most evidence for this association comes from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies, which are culturally distinctive in their strong emphasis on happiness. To assess the cross-cultural generality of the affect-meaning link, we conducted the largest cross-cultural investigation of this association to date. Between 2022 and 2024, we collected data from 18,672 individuals across 69 countries spanning all inhabited continents. Across cultures, the association between affect and meaning was largely robust: Positive affect was positively related to meaning in life in 62 countries, and negative affect was negatively related to meaning in 57 countries. At the same time, substantial cross-cultural variation emerged. Multilevel analyses indicated that both associations were, on average, somewhat stronger in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries than in most other regions. Moreover, a cross-level interaction showed that the links between affect (both positive and negative) and meaning were stronger in countries that more strongly idealize happiness, even after accounting for national differences in wealth, religiosity, and life satisfaction. Cross-cultural differences were more pronounced for the association between negative affect and meaning than for the association involving positive affect. Meaning was consistently associated with all eight discrete emotions. However, cultural valuation of happiness moderated only the associations with fear, shame, sadness, anger, and gratitude, with weaker evidence for relaxedness and excitement and no moderation observed for love. Together, these findings suggest that while affective experiences are a widespread basis for evaluating meaning in life, their psychological significance is amplified in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic cultural contexts that place greater emphasis on happiness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
PMID:
43019484
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 13 Nov 2026.
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