Cultural Variation in Flourishing

Despite differences in how scholars define flourishing, they tend to approach the question of flourishing from a universalist perspective by assuming that it amounts to a single, overarching concept across cultures. We will review the weaknesses in this approach. First, we highlight limitations in current "cross-cultural" research on flourishing, which prioritizes psychometric validity at the expense of cultural validity. We then review the inherent Western assumptions that seem to underly the flourishing literature, which include the tendency to (1) focus on the person as an independent, autonomous unit, (2) neglect elements of duty and responsibility to others, (3) overlook communal flourishing (4) disregard the influence of religion and spirituality, and (5) emphasize high-arousal positive emotions ("joy," "happiness," "excitement") at the expense of low-arousal positive emotions in conceptualizations of flourishing. These findings underscore the need to expand the existing paradigms of flourishing to include concepts that are relevant to how individuals conceptualize flourishing in their respective societies. Careful assessment and integration of sociocultural meaning systems and differing philosophical, religious, and political traditions is critically warranted to understand flourishing in diverse populations.