U.S. hits new low in World Happiness Report

I believe that these self-reported surveys are partly testing the cultural acceptability of complaining—that is, the more unacceptable it is to complain, the happier one comes out in the scoring. How well that corresponds to 'actual' happiness is, of course, a different question.

I base this on experience with some of the 'happy' cultures on the list. However, I would be interested in knowing whether HN members from Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and the Netherlands (to name the top 5) agree with this concept or not.

It is obvious to anybody who has ever been to the Nordic countries: They are far from being the happiest people in the world. A lot of them are very miserable, for reasons that I could never deduce.

Is it? As someone from Norway, who has spent plenty of time in the other Nordic countries, I'd disagree strongly. We'll complain a lot. Until you ask us to actually rank how happy we are with our lives.

If you base you impression on what people are saying without explicitly asking how happy they are with their lives, then you're getting an impression that's biased by almost an eagerness to complain, despite at the end of the day generally being very satisfied.