section_path: Society and culture/Cultural values
section_name: Cultural values
paragraph_text: Cultural values
  
  Personal happiness can be affected by cultural factors. Hedonism appears to be more strongly related to happiness in more individualistic cultures. Forcing people to marry and stay married can have adverse consequences. Research has shown that unhappily married couples suffer 3–25 times the risk of developing clinical depression.
  
  One theory is that higher SWB in richer countries is related to their more individualistic cultures. Individualistic cultures may satisfy intrinsic motivations to a higher degree than collectivistic cultures, and fulfilling intrinsic motivations, as opposed to extrinsic motivations, may relate to greater levels of happiness, leading to more happiness in individualistic cultures.
  
  Cultural views on happiness have changed over time. For instance Western concern about childhood being a time of happiness has occurred only since the 19th century. Not all cultures seek to maximize happiness, and some cultures are averse to happiness. It has been found in Western cultures that individual happiness is the most important. Some other cultures have opposite views and tend to be aversive to the idea of individual happiness. For example, people living in Eastern Asian cultures focus more on the need for happiness within relationships with others and even find personal happiness to be harmful to fulfilling happy social relationships.