Are Virtuous People Happy All Around the World? Civic Virtue,Antisocial Punishment,and Subjective Well-Being Across Cultures

Abstract

Psychological research postulates a positive relationship between virtue and happiness. This article investigates whether this relationship holds in cultures where virtue is not socially appreciated. We specifically focus on civic virtue, which is conceptualized as citizens’ honesty in interactions with state institutions (e.g., tax compliance). Two indicators served as measures of the degree to which civic virtue is a part of a country’s normative climate: These were each country’s mean level of punishment directed at above-average cooperative players in public good experiments and the extent to which citizens justify fraud and free-riding. The results of two studies with data from 13 and 73 countries demonstrate that a positive relationship between civic virtue and happiness/life satisfaction is not universal: In countries where antisocial punishment is common and the level of justification of dishonest behaviors is high, virtuous individuals are no longer happier and more satisfied with life than selfish individuals.

Keywords

happiness life satisfaction virtue social norms antisocial punishment cross-national research

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle suggests that being virtuous is the best way to be happy (Aristotle, 1992). Inspired by this ancient idea (Haidt, 2006; Kesebir & Diener, 2008), psychologists have put it to numerous empirical tests, demonstrating that a virtuous mindset and behavior—also referred to as altruism or prosociality in the psychological literature—are indeed positively related to well-being (Borgonovi, 2008; Buchanan & Bardi, 2010; Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008; James, 2011; Post, 2005). One possible explanation for this relationship is that virtuous behavior itself may be rewarding (Andreoni, 1990)—an explanation that assumes a stability of these findings across cultures. Alternatively, virtuous individuals might be happier due to the higher status, interpersonal influence, and respect afforded them by other members of their society (Hardy & Van Vugt, 2006; Willer, 2009a, 2009b). However, if this were to hold true, virtue should be related to happiness only in cultures that guarantee these social rewards and benefits.

Recent cross-national research in experimental economics has shown that some countries do not satisfy this criterion. Cross-national public good game experiments have demonstrated that in some Eastern and Southern European countries, players tend to use their own money to reduce the earnings of the more generous members of their group (Herrmann, Thöni, & Gächter, 2008), a phenomenon referred to as antisocial punishment (Nikiforakis, 2008; Rand & Nowak, 2011). In another experiment—the ultimatum game—a relatively high proportion of individuals in Russia and in a number of small-scale societies tended to reject unfairly generous (greater than 50%) offers leaving the excessively generous proposers empty-handed (Bahry & Wilson, 2006; Henrich et al., 2006). Hence, in some countries, virtuous or cooperative behavior does not guarantee a higher status, and may instead be related to greater risk for social sanctions and exclusion, especially if this behavior is “too virtuous,” that is, deviates too much from average, more common behavior (also see Monin, Sawyer, & Marquez, 2008; Parks & Stone, 2010). The purpose of this article, therefore, was to investigate whether Aristotle was indeed correct, in the sense that being virtuous is a way to be happy, even in countries where being virtuous simultaneously makes one a norm-deviant.

Virtue and Subjective Well-Being

The meaning of virtue in ancient philosophy is based on a very broad range of qualities. For example, Aristotle discussed 15 virtues, including justice, generosity, trustfulness, temperance, and courage (Aristotle, 1992). In his view, living a virtuous life—cultivating a sense of justice, honesty, and civic responsibility—was inextricably linked to achieving happiness. In a similar vein, the stoic philosophers argued that a virtuous person could be happy even while being tortured, and the Epicureans believed that it was impossible to enjoy life without living honestly and justly (McMahon, 2006).

Recently, psychologists have started to consider virtue—most commonly conceptualized as prosociality and altruism—in explanations of human happiness (Dunn et al., 2008; Haidt, 2006). A positive relationship between happiness and different kinds of prosocial behaviors such as giving help, donating money, or doing volunteer work has been documented in the literature (Borgonovi, 2008; Dulin & Hill, 2003; Hertel, Neuhof, Theuer, & Kerr, 2000; Phelps, 2001; Schwartz, Meisenhelder, Ma, & Reed, 2003). For example, volunteering and involvement in community service have been shown to be related to more positive emotions, less depressive moods, and better mental health (Meier & Stutzer, 2004; Mellor et al., 2008; Wilson, 2000) among older adults (Pilkington, Windsor, & Crisp, 2012) and adolescents (Magen & Aharoni, 1991). Simple acts of kindness were also shown to increase life satisfaction. In an intervention study, Buchanan and Bardi (2010) demonstrated that participants assigned to perform kind acts daily showed a higher life satisfaction compared with a control group within a period of 10 days (see also Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005). Not only virtuous acts but also a virtuous mindset has been associated with happiness. For example, individuals who disapproved of fraudulent behaviors were more satisfied with life than citizens with more permissive attitudes (Helliwell, 2003; James, 2011).

Some researchers have compared the benefits of well-being derived from altruistic and egoistic behaviors. For example, Dunn and her colleagues (2008) showed that spending money on others is a better predictor of happiness than spending money on oneself. This line of thought has a long philosophical tradition and has been described as a “hedonic paradox” (Konow & Earley, 2008), stating that those who seek happiness for themselves will not find it while those who seek happiness for others will (Mill, 1893/1989).

The vast majority of these studies were based on the data collected in North America and Western Europe—the Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) population—as referred to by Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010). Historically, psychologists have been using their universities’ undergraduate students for their research and have only rarely asked whether their findings will be replicated in other samples (Faucheux, 1976; Norenzayan & Heine, 2005; Smith & Bond, 1998). With the rapid development of cross-cultural psychology in recent decades, social and personality researchers have become increasingly interested in learning how well their findings could be replicated in different sociocultural environments. Several psychological phenomena, such as personality structure (McCrae & Terracciano, 2005), indeed appeared to satisfy the psychological assumptions of universality, whereas others, like reasoning and spatial cognition (Majid, Bowerman, Kita, Haun, & Levinson, 2004; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001), were more subject to major sociocultural influences (for a review, see Henrich et al., 2010).

Can the assumption of virtue as a means to happiness be included in the list of psychological universals? Cross-cultural research examining the links between virtue and well-being is surprisingly scarce, and its findings are rather mixed. Recently, Aknin and colleagues (2010) examined the relationship between prosocial spending and subjective well-being across 136 countries and found a significant (at a 5% level) positive association in approximately 60% of the countries studied, whereas in 11% of these 136 countries, this association turned out to be negative. The researchers proposed that the happiness effect of prosocial spending might be a so-called functional universal, a phenomenon that is present in most cultures to various degrees. In another study, Haski-Leventhal (2009) noted substantial variations in the positive association between volunteering and life satisfaction in Europe, with near-zero correlations in some of the countries studied. Such cross-cultural variations indicate the possibility of cultural moderators that “switch” this association on and off or even change its direction. In this article, we focus on identifying these sociocultural moderators in an example of a particular aspect of virtue identified in ancient Greek philosophy—civic virtue.

Civic Virtue

Civic virtue, also referred to as civic-mindedness, ethics, morality, or norms of civic cooperation (Chuah, Hoffmann, Jones, & Williams, 2009; Fetchenhauer & Wittek, 2006; Knack & Keefer, 1997; Vauclair & Fischer, 2011), is defined as the degree to which people do not condone fraudulent actions that harm their community or society as a whole, such as tax evasion, welfare abuse, dodging a public transport fare, and similar transgressions (Knack & Keefer, 1997). These transgressions are related to individuals’ inability to recognize their ties and responsibilities within their community and their willingness to free-ride on others’ efforts. In economists’ terminology, violations of civic virtue represent an individual’s failure to cooperate in public good dilemmas and can be described as falling “in the grey zone of legality and morality” (Karstedt & Farrall, 2006, p. 1011).

The concept of civic virtue has been used widely across social, political, and psychological sciences (Cullen, Parboteeah, & Hoegl, 2004; James, 2011; Knack & Keefer, 1997; Lopes, 2010; Vauclair & Fischer, 2011). It is commonly measured using items that pertain to the justification of dubious behaviors that violate the social code of cooperation—the measurement originated in the Morally Debatable Behaviors Scale (Harding & Phillips, 1986; Vauclair & Fischer, 2011). Several studies demonstrated that this measure has good external validity and is related to real behavior. For example, the tax-evasion-related component of civic norms—labeled tax morale—has been related to tax compliance in experimental and survey settings (Alm, Sanchez, & de Juan, 1995; Cummings, Martinez-Vazquez, McKee, & Torgler, 2009). In addition, civic virtue has shown a significant relationship to economic development, interpersonal trust, national crime rates, the size of the shadow economy, and even to a behavioral indicator of citizens’ honesty such as the number of lost wallets returned to their owners (Alm & Torgler, 2006; Fetchenhauer & Wittek, 2006; Halpern, 2001; Knack & Keefer, 1997).

Is civic virtue, then, like other types of virtue, positively associated with subjective well-being, and does this association hold even in countries where civic virtue makes one a norm-deviant?

Conformity and Subjective Well-Being

Being a norm-deviant might indeed be a serious obstacle on one’s way to happiness. The research on social norms and motivational sources of conformity (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004; Horne, 2009) suggests that deviance from others’ normative expectations is related to a fear of isolation, negative emotional outcomes, and decreased self-esteem (Christensen, Rothgerber, Wood, & Matz, 2004; Matz & Wood, 2005; Pool, Wood, & Leck, 1998). Indeed, deviant group members are evaluated more negatively by others and run the risk of being expelled from the group (Abrams, Marques, Bown, & Henson, 2000; Marques, Abrams, & Serôdio, 2001).

Nonconformity to a country’s cultural norms is associated with negative outcomes as well. For example, unemployed people are especially unhappy in countries with a strong social norm against living off public funds (Stavrova, Schlösser, & Fetchenhauer, 2011; Stutzer & Lalive, 2004), as are unmarried cohabitors—in countries where cohabitation is not socially accepted (Soons & Kalmijn, 2009), and cohabiting women, in countries where society’s expectation for women to marry is especially strong (Stavrova, Fetchenhauer, & Schlösser, 2012). Similarly, nonreligious individuals suffer from a lack of social approval and lower subjective well-being in countries where religiosity represents a socially desirable characteristic (Snoep, 2008; Stavrova, Fetchenhauer, & Schlösser, 2013).

In contrast, individuals whose personality or sociodemographic characteristics are widespread and “prototypical” in their society are considered to be more likable and socially attractive by their fellow group members (Byrne, 1971). These individuals are more likely to achieve a fit with their proximate social environment (person–environment fit, also referred to as person–culture match; Fulmer et al., 2010), which has multiple positive implications for their well-being and general functioning. For example, employees who display a high level of similarity to their coworkers in terms of their personality, values, or goals report a strong commitment to their organization and job satisfaction (for a review, see Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005). Within psychology departments, endorsement of the widespread universalism values by psychology students was shown to be positively related to their well-being compared with business administration students, whose social environment (departments of business administration) values power rather than universalism (Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000). In a more general context, the psychological well-being of individuals who scored high on certain personality traits such as extraversion or locomotion was found to be strengthened in the cultural contexts in which these personality traits were dominant (Fulmer et al., 2010).

The Present Research

This research questions the psychological universality of the association between civic virtue and subjective well-being (happiness and life satisfaction) by examining whether civic virtue enhances well-being even amid the above-mentioned disadvantages of nonconformity. We suggest that virtuous people are happier and more satisfied with life than their fraudulent counterparts but only in countries where civic virtue provides social rewards and status.

It becomes necessary then to identify countries in which civic virtue is rewarded and where it is not. To accomplish this, we used two different methodologies. In Study 1, we used countries’ mean levels of antisocial punishment, obtained from cross-nationally conducted public good games (Herrmann et al., 2008). In Study 2, we used countries’ average rates of disapproval of ethically questionable behaviors, obtained from European Values Study (EVS; 2011) and World Values Survey (WVS; 2005) as an indicator of a country’s normative climate.

A country’s mean antisocial punishment represents the average amount of money the participants spent in the public good games to reduce the earnings of the more cooperative members in their group. The advantage of this indicator is that it represents a truly behavioral measure of the degree to which participants disapprove of civic virtue and accept free-riding. It should be noted that a country’s level of antisocial punishment is not just an indicator of the degree to which the people are mean-spirited or hostile; it reflects the norms of civic-mindedness and cooperation enforced in its society. Specifically, antisocial punishment shows relatively weak associations with the general “kindness” of a culture. Its correlation with a country’s mean “unselfishness” value (measured as a share of the respondents who mentioned “unselfishness” among the values that children should learn, WVS and EVS, 2005-2008) is rather moderate, r(13) = −.23, p = .45, whereas its correlation with a country’s average agreeableness (taken from McCrae & Terracciano, 2005) is very close to 0, r(10) = −.05, p = .89. In contrast, antisocial punishment is strongly related to countries’ mean civic virtue, that is countries’ average rates of disapproval of ethically questionable behaviors that violate the social code of cooperation such as tax evasion, benefits fraud, and free-riding in public transport (Herrmann et al., 2008).

Apparently, a country’s mean antisocial punishment and civic virtue reflect the same underlying cultural characteristic: social desirability of honesty in public good dilemmas (Herrmann et al., 2008). In fact, public good problems with free-rider incentives—be they experimental public good games or a real-life tax-compliance situations—are inherently related to norms of civic virtue. In countries with high levels of antisocial punishment, people are more likely to justify these dishonest behaviors than in countries with lower levels of antisocial punishment. This suggests that in countries with high levels of antisocial punishment, cooperation does not have a social desirability component, and thus, cooperative behavior does not elicit any additional benefits related to social approval. We speculate that the social norm in these countries might even prescribe free-riding instead of cooperation, which would make benevolent cooperators norm-deviants who deserve punishment for their cooperative behavior.

To estimate the effect of civic virtue on happiness and life satisfaction as a function of a country’s normative climate, we used a series of multilevel regression models. The advantage of using multilevel modeling is that between-country variations in normative climate can be used to explain the differences in the effects of individuals’ civic virtue on their happiness and life satisfaction (Hox, 2002; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). Hence, we can estimate whether virtuous individuals are equally happy in countries that differ in the degree to which virtue is socially rewarded.

Study 1

In Study 1, we examined whether the association between civic virtue and happiness/life satisfaction is affected by a country’s mean antisocial punishment.

We used the individual-level data from the pooled EVS (2011) and WVS (2005) administered via face-to-face interviews between 2005 and 2008. The data on countries’ levels of antisocial punishment stem from public good experiments conducted by Herrmann and colleagues in 15 countries worldwide (Herrmann et al., 2008). Our analysis was restricted to approximately 22,200 participants in 13 countries for which both individual- and country-level data were available (Australia, Belarus, China, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, Ukraine, and United States).

Method

We measured individual’s civic virtue as a composite of three items, assessing the degree to which people justify (a) claiming government benefits to which they are not entitled, (b) avoiding a fare on public transport, and (c) cheating on taxes if they have a chance (10-point scale).¹ We computed the scale’s reliability using a procedure that takes into account the nested structure of the data (Kamata, Bauer, & Miyazake, 2008); α = .68. The scale’s reliability varied across countries (Table 2), but this variation was not related to antisocial punishment, the country’s mean civic virtue, or the country-level association between civic virtue and happiness/life satisfaction, r(13) = −.27, p = .37; r(13) = −.15, p = .63; r(13) = −.01, p = .97; and r(13) = −.03, p = .91, respectively.

We controlled for sociodemographic variables that were shown to affect subjective well-being in previous research (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999): gender, age, and age squared (to account for a curvilinear effect of age on happiness; Frey & Stutzer, 2002a), employment and marital status, educational level, income,² religiosity—“Are you a religious person (1), a nonreligious person (0), or an atheist (0)?”—and confidence in the government (a 4-point scale). To ensure that the effect of antisocial punishment was not confounded with other factors at the country level, we controlled for countries’ gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (United Nations Organisation, 2011), the cultural dimension of individualism (Hofstede, 2003),³ and the rule of law (Kaufmann, Kraay, & Mastruzzi, 2010). The rule of law is one of the governance indicators supplied by the World Bank Group. It measures citizens’ confidence in, and effectiveness of, fiscal and justice systems, property rights, respect for law in relations between citizens and administration, enforceability of contracts as well as the likelihood of crime and violence. Strong rule of law in a country suggests that the law enforcement and civic service institutions are perceived as effective, fair, and trustworthy (Kaufmann et al., 2010).

The dependent variables included happiness and life satisfaction. Happiness was measured with the question “Taking all things together, would you say you are not at all happy, not very happy, quite happy, or very happy?” (a 4-point scale). To measure life satisfaction, participants were asked to respond to a question: “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?” along a 10-point scale ranging from “completely dissatisfied” (1) to “completely satisfied” (10). In this way, we examined two facets of subjective well-being: the cognitive (life satisfaction) and the affective (happiness; Diener et al., 1999). These measures have appropriate validity and reliability (Diener, 1984; Kahneman & Krueger, 2006) and are commonly used in cross-national psychological, sociological, and economic research (Frey & Stutzer, 2002b).

Results

Zero-order correlational analyses between civic virtue and happiness, computed for each country separately, indicated that a positive association, although commonly found in the literature, is not universal. For example, in Denmark, virtuous individuals are happier than their less virtuous counterparts, r(1486) = .08, p < .01, while in Greece, they are less happy than their more malicious fellow citizens, r(1463) = −.06, p < .05. The same applies to the association between civic virtue and life satisfaction, which ranges from r(2218) = −.08 (p < .001) in Ukraine to r(2474) = .11 (p < .001) in Switzerland.

Do differences in normative climates among countries account for the cultural variability in these relationships? In Figure 1, the correlations between civic virtue and life satisfaction are plotted against countries’ mean antisocial punishment. Indeed, where antisocial punishment is relatively low, civic virtue is positively related to life satisfaction, whereas in countries where antisocial punishment is common, selfish individuals are more satisfied with life than their virtuous counterparts. This relationship is strong and statistically significant, r(13) = −.67, p < .05.⁴

Figure 1.

Correlation between an individual’s civic virtue and life satisfaction plotted against the degree of antisocial punishment in a country, r(13) = −.67, p < .05.

Our data structure reflects the way in which individuals are nested within larger units, that is, in countries. To account for this particularity and to control for the influence of possible confounding variables at the individual and country level, we utilized multilevel modeling (Hox, 2002). We conducted a series of multilevel regression analyses with individual- and country-level control variables, individuals’ civic virtue as the focus independent variable, life satisfaction and happiness as the dependent variables, and countries’ mean antisocial punishment as a moderator.

The literature on subjective well-being has identified a number of sociodemographic variables that are related to happiness and life satisfaction (e.g., Diener et al., 1999). To control for these possible confounding factors, we included them in all regression models as covariates.

Model 1 (Table 1) presents the main effects of civic virtue and countries’ antisocial punishment on happiness (left-hand panel) and life satisfaction (right-hand panel) while controlling for the individuals’ other characteristics. It can be observed that the effects of individual characteristics that were shown to influence happiness and life satisfaction in prior studies (for a review, see Diener et al., 1999) were replicated in this study as well, with age, employment, marital status, religiosity, and confidence in the government having a noteworthy influence on happiness and life satisfaction.

Table 1.

Multilevel Regression Analysis With Countries’ Mean Antisocial Punishment, Study 1.

	Happiness						Life satisfaction
	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3		Model 1		Model 2		Model 3
Variable	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE
Intercept	2.90***	.06	2.90***	.06	2.90***	.05	6.63***	.23	6.62***	.21	6.62***	.17
Country-level variables
Country’s mean antisocial punishment	−0.51*	.22	−0.46	.22	−0.18**	.05	0.22	.68	−1.19	.72	−0.45	.24
GDP per capita	—	—	—	—	5e-6	2e-6	—	—	—	—	2e-5	9e-6
Rule of law	—	—	—	—	0.04	.06	—	—	—	—	0.17	.13
Individualism index	—	—	—	—	0.001	.001	—	—	—	—	−0.003	.004
Individual-level variables
Age	−0.01***	.001	−0.01***	.001	−0.01***	.001	−0.01***	.001	−0.01***	.003	−0.01***	.003
Age²	2e-4***	2e-5	2e-4***	2e-5	2e-4***	2e-5	6e-4***	5e-5	6e-4***	6e-5	6e-4***	6e-5
Male	−0.01	.02	−0.01	.02	−0.01	.02	−0.03	.04	−0.03	.04	−0.03	.04
Employed	0.004	.01	0.004	.01	0.01	.01	0.02	.04	0.02	.04	0.02	.04
Unemployed	−0.23***	.04	−0.23***	.04	−0.23***	.04	−0.84***	.18	−0.84***	.18	−0.84***	.18
Married	0.25***	.02	0.25***	.02	0.25***	.02	0.51***	.07	0.51***	.07	0.51***	.07
Single	0.08**	.02	0.08**	.02	0.08**	.02	0.17*	.07	0.17*	.07	0.17*	.07
Primary education	−0.08	.04	−0.08	.04	−0.07	.04	−0.27**	.08	−0.27**	.08	−0.27**	.08
Secondary education	−0.04*	.02	−0.04*	.02	−0.04*	.02	−0.13**	.05	−0.13**	.05	−0.13**	.05
Income	0.17***	.04	0.17***	.04	0.17***	.04	0.76***	.16	0.76***	.16	0.76***	.16
Personal religiosity	0.10***	.01	0.10***	.01	0.10***	.01	0.28***	.07	0.28***	.07	0.28***	.07
Confidence in the government	0.08***	.02	0.08***	.02	0.08***	.02	0.30***	.05	0.30***	.05	0.30***	.05
Civic virtue	0.02*	.01	0.02*	.01	0.02*	.01	0.05*	.02	0.05**	.02	0.05**	.02
Civic Virtue × Country’s Mean Antisocial Punishment	—	—	−0.06***	.01	−0.06***	.01	—	—	−0.21***	.03	−0.21***	.03
Variance components
Var (intercept)	0.039 (0.198)		0.039 (0.198)		0.017 (0.131)		0.567 (0.753)		0.430 (0.656)		0.173 (0.416)
Var (civic virtue)	0.0005 (0.022)		0.0002 (0.016)		0.0002 (0.016)		0.005 (0.067)		0.001 (0.037)		0.001 (0.037)
Var (residual)	0.433 (0.658)		0.433 (0.658)		0.433 (0.658)		4.268 (2.066)		4.283 (2.065)		4.268 (2.066)

Note: GDP = gross domestic product. Estimation method: Restricted maximum likelihood. All continuous variables at the individual’s level are centered on the group mean. All continuous variables at the country level are centered on the grand mean. Reference categories: For employment status—other (housewives, military servants, and similar); for marital status—divorced/widowed; for education—tertiary.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 1 also shows that on average across countries, civic virtue is positively related to happiness (b = .02, p < .05) and life satisfaction (b = .05, p < .05). High levels of antisocial punishment, in contrast, are associated with lower happiness (b = .02, p < .05). To estimate whether the positive effect of civic virtue depends on a country’s antisocial punishment, Model 2 (Table 1) introduces the interaction term between an individual’s civic virtue and a country’s mean antisocial punishment. The interaction effect reduced the unexplained cross-cultural variance in the effect of civic virtue on happiness and life satisfaction by 60% and 80%, respectively, and showed that the positive effect of civic virtue was significantly moderated by the country’s level of antisocial punishment (happiness: b = −.06, p < .001, and life satisfaction: b = −.21, p < .001).

Next, we probed the interaction by computing the region of significance of simple slopes. To accomplish this, we utilized the Johnson–Neyman technique (Preacher, Curran, & Bauer, 2006). The Johnson–Neyman technique determines the region of significance on a given moderator variable by computing its lower and upper bounds. At any given value of the moderator variable lying outside these bounds, the regression of the dependent variable on the focal predictor is significant at a p < .05 level. We determined the values of a country’s mean antisocial punishment (measured in experimental money units, mean-centered, with the actual range from −.22 to .72) at which the regressions of life satisfaction and happiness on individual’s civic virtue are significant. For life satisfaction, the lower bound of the region of significance was .12 (the simple slope of civic virtue at the lower bound was b = .05, p = .05), while the upper bound was .41 (the simple slope of civic virtue at the upper bound was b = −.03, p = .05). That is, the effect of civic virtue on life satisfaction was significant at the 5% level in countries with a level of antisocial punishment lower than .12 and higher than .41. In other words, only in countries with a low to average level of antisocial punishment (less than .12 money units above the mean) were virtuous individuals significantly more satisfied than fraudulent ones. In countries with a higher than average level of antisocial punishment, no significant association between civic virtue and life satisfaction was detected, whereas countries that reached a high level of antisocial punishment (higher than .41 money units above the mean) showed a significant reverse effect: Fraudulent individuals were significantly happier than their virtuous counterparts. It should be noted, however, that in our relatively small sample, only Greece showed such a high level of antisocial punishment. The same conclusion can be drawn for the association between civic virtue and happiness (lower bound: .09, the simple slope at the lower bound was b = .01, p = .05; upper bound: .54, the simple slope at the upper bound was b = −.02, p = .05). Hence, the positive effect of civic virtue on happiness and life satisfaction is restricted to countries where antisocial punishment is not widespread. In contrast, where antisocial punishment is common, virtuous individuals are no longer happier (or even less happy) than their more fraudulent counterparts.

Finally, in Model 3, we entered country-level control variables to examine whether the effect of antisocial punishment on the well-being of virtuous individuals is robust against national differences in economic development, institutional quality, and individualism. The results showed that these variables did not affect the interaction effect between civic virtue and antisocial punishment either in size or in significance, indicating the robustness of the interaction effect against the influences of possible country-level confounding factors, b_{(Interaction Civic Virtue × Mean Civic Virtue)} = −.06, p < .001 and b_{(Interaction Civic Virtue × Mean Civic Virtue)} = −.21, p < .001, respectively.

The results from Study 1 provide the first evidence of the influence of the cultural norm of civic cooperation on the relationship between civic virtue and subjective well-being. Yet, due to limited country-level data on the prevalence of antisocial punishment, this evidence is based on only a small number of countries. To compensate for this weakness, in Study 2, we used a different measure of a country’s normative climate—national mean civic virtue. This modification allowed us to extend the analysis to 73 countries and thus increase its reliability.

Study 2

In Study 2, we examined the extent to which the association between an individual’s civic virtue and his or her happiness/life satisfaction may be influenced by a country’s mean civic virtue.

We used the individual-level data from the pooled EVS (2011) and WVS (2005) carried out between 2005 and 2008. The data include information from 73 countries and approximately 103,200 participants (see Table 2 for a list of countries).

Table 2.

Country-Level Indicators.

	Number of observations	GDP per capita^a	Rule of law^b	Mean civic virtue	Cronbach’s α (Civic Virtue Scale)	Individualism/collectivism index	Within-country associations between civic virtue and life satisfaction^c	Within-country associations between civic virtue and happiness^c
Albania	1114	4076.90	−0.60	8.54	.76	26.10^d	−.02	−.03
Andorra	924	40820.80	1.18	8.31	.61	36.59^d	.04	.01
Armenia	1176	3787.50	−0.28	8.64	.45	34.82^d	.10	.00
Azerbaijan	1291	5462.15	−0.73	8.34	.15^e	33.46^d	.09	.04
Australia	1217	37482.04	1.67	8.96	.79	90.00	.26	.05
Austria	1099	48940.50	1.73	8.37	.70	55.00	.04	.01
Belarus	1016	6275.60	−0.97	7.20	.71	16.96^d	.01	.01
Belgium	1327	44356.12	1.37	8.42	.48	75.00	.03	.01
Bosnia and Herzegovina	1098	4904.90	−0.40	8.83	.63	33.20^d	.07	.02
Brazil	1387	5795.19	−0.41	7.56	.61	38.00	.09	.02
Bulgaria	1857	5572.81	−0.15	8.97	.71	30.00	.06	.03
Burkina Faso	945	448.56	−0.41	8.50	.75	30.25^d	.03	.00
Canada	1629	39187.44	1.75	9.04	.74	80.00	.06	.01
Chile	837	7253.84	1.25	7.67	.58	23.00	.08	.02
China	1168	2691.02	−0.45	8.63	.65	20.00	.09	.05
Croatia	1130	15822.81	0.22	8.28	.62	33.00	.00	−.02
Cyprus	1707	27784.51	1.12	8.65	.57	39.10^d	−.01	.00
Czech Republic	1229	21722.94	0.89	8.33	.79	58.00	.05	.01
Denmark	1029	62115.25	1.91	9.32	.46	74.00	.11	.05
Estonia	1190	17773.06	1.16	8.58	.62	60.00	.05	−.01
Ethiopia	1241	246.82	−0.57	9.14	.76	20.00	.18	.04
Finland	1756	41182.20	1.91	8.84	.68	63.00	.16	.03
France	2177	39956.96	1.42	8.10	.58	71.00	.09	.02
Georgia	2446	2911.95	−0.23	9.10	.89	23.78^d	−.05	.00
Germany	3272	39553.05	1.68	8.86	.76	67.00	.13	.03
Ghana	1346	1090.05	0.04	8.47	.59	15.00	.18	.00
Greece	1220	30215.52	0.79	8.00	.47	35.00	−.07	−.03
Guatemala	913	2139.73	−1.12	7.74	.68	6.00	.00	.01
Hong Kong	1007	26105.05	1.56	8.73	.73	25.00	.26	.04
Hungary	1233	15389.67	0.85	9.01	.71	80.00	−.09	−.01
Iceland	660	54240.63	1.72	8.94	.44	68.80^d	.12	.06
India	1116	819.06	0.19	7.92	.88	48.00	.07	.03
Indonesia	1517	1585.65	−0.71	9.25	.70	14.00	.10	.01
Iran	2394	4369.55	−0.89	8.24	.58	41.00	.00	.01
Ireland	482	60570.17	1.71	8.58	.75	70.00	.08	.04
Italy	1477	32669.99	0.44	8.94	.63	76.00	.11	.02
Japan	753	36016.18	1.24	9.30	.68	46.00	.02	.02
Kosovo	1297	2264.68	−0.59	9.55	.68	33.94^d	.14	.02
Latvia	1135	14729.16	0.81	8.14	.68	53.25^d	.09	−.01
Lithuania	949	14153.24	0.65	7.85	.74	36.91^d	.03	.01
Luxembourg	1076	118672.73	1.81	8.16	.56	60.00	.08	.02
Macedonia	1173	4791.19	−0.33	9.22	.82	51.61^d	.07	.06
Malaysia	1190	5890.30	0.56	7.23	.80	26.00	.07	.01
Mali	761	509.63	−0.36	7.76	.86	35.97^d	−.05	−.03
Malta	743	20665.24	1.59	9.60	.77	59.00	.51	.07
Mexico	1324	7945.76	−0.40	7.32	.55	30.00	.06	.02
Moldova	2033	1291.55	−0.48	8.20	.70	37.00^d	.05	.00
Montenegro	1033	7183.74	−0.12	8.85	.67	25.35^d	.04	.00
Morocco	1080	2425.68	−0.14	9.09	.69	25.00	.04	.00
Netherlands	1927	45961.45	1.73	9.02	.53	80.00	.07	.03
Norway	1911	93156.84	1.94	8.80	.56	69.00	.09	.02
Poland	1759	10907.41	0.51	8.35	.77	60.00	.05	.00
Portugal	728	13851.72	1.02	8.92	.77	27.00	.22	−.01
Romania	2317	7009.90	−0.04	8.64	.69	30.00	.00	−.02
Russia	2260	9249.54	−0.93	7.73	.74	39.00	−.04	−.01
Serbia	1958	5220.24	−0.52	7.86	.86	25.00	.17	.03
Slovak Republic	956	17347.79	0.60	8.17	.77	52.00	−.05	−.02
Slovenia	1517	22449.23	0.93	8.46	.69	27.00	−.02	−.01
South Africa	2639	5859.02	0.15	8.41	.87	65.00	.02	.00
South Korea	1183	17959.00	0.96	8.64	.71	18.00	−.08	−.03
Spain	1852	33816.45	1.10	8.49	.73	51.00	.02	−.01
Sweden	1680	43623.38	1.37	8.62	.62	71.00	.16	.02
Switzerland	1886	62081.47	1.80	9.08	.55	68.00	.16	.03
Taiwan	1202	2691.02^d	0.78	8.79	.59	17.00	.16	.03
Thailand	1455	3642.92	−0.02	7.60	.69	20.00	.09	.00
Trinidad and Tobago	936	13911.59	−0.27	8.38	.65	16.00	.04	.02
Turkey	3169	9771.57	0.08	9.56	.71	37.00	.01	.02
United Kingdom	1970	37800.34	1.70	8.93	.71	89.00	.11	.03
Ukraine	1688	3113.14	−0.74	8.10	.75	30.57^d	−.09	−.02
Uruguay	931	5951.18	0.48	8.63	.72	36.00	.07	.00
United States	1131	44446.19	1.57	8.81	.72	91.00	.10	.01
Vietnam	1301	724.51	−0.40	8.97	.69	20.00	.13	−.03
Zambia	976	957.37	−0.54	7.54	.85	35.00	.06	.02

Note: GDP = gross domestic product.

In the absence of an estimate of Republic of China’s (Taiwan) GDP, the GDP estimate of China was used.

The range of possible values is from −2.5 to 2.5. High values indicate a strong rule of law.

Unstandardized ordinary least squares estimates (from a bivariate regression).

Average of imputed values.

Analyses without Azerbaijan produced no substantially different results.

Method

The dependent variables—general happiness and life satisfaction—were measured with the same questions as in Study 1. Like in Study 1, we measured an individual’s civic virtue as a composite of three items, assessing the degree to which people justify (a) claiming government benefits to which they are not entitled, (b) avoiding a fare on public transport, and (c) cheating on taxes if they have a chance. The scale’s reliability was similar to that reported in Study 1; α = .69. Between-country variation in the scale’s reliability was not related to the country’s mean civic virtue or the country-level association between civic virtue and happiness/life satisfaction, r(73) = −.06, p = .59, r(73) = −.05, p = .65, r(73) = .01, p = .94, respectively.

To measure a country’s normative climate, we used national mean levels of individuals’ civic virtue (average of the country’s mean justification of tax evasion, benefit fraud, and free-riding on public transport), presented in Table 2. This scale showed a good internal consistency (with a Cronbach’s α of .82, based on 73 observations).

Finally, in Study 2, we used the same sociodemographic covariates as in Study 1: gender, age and age squared, employment and marital status, educational level, income, religiosity, and confidence in the government. Similarly, we controlled for countries’ GDP per capita, individualism,⁵ and rule of law (Kaufmann et al., 2010).

Results

An examination of the descriptive statistics for countries’ mean civic virtue reveals that countries’ populations generally tend to disapprove of fraudulent behaviors and thus scored in the upper quartile of the scales (M = 8.56, SD = 1.80). Nevertheless, there are still subsistent between-country differences in the degree to which citizens do not condone fraudulent behavior, with scores ranging from 7.20 (in Belarus) to 9.56 (in Turkey). Countries’ mean civic virtue is negatively related to their level of antisocial punishment, r(13) = −.62, p < .05. That is, in countries with a higher prevalence of antisocial punishment, fraudulent behaviors tend to be more justified than in countries with a lower level of antisocial punishment. Hence, between-country differences in national mean levels of individuals’ civic virtue reflect cross-cultural differences in antisocial punishment. Consequently, countries’ civic virtue and antisocial punishment indeed measure the same underlying concept—countries’ normative climate.

The analyses we present next follow the same structure as in Study 1. We conducted multilevel regression analyses with individual- and country-level control variables, using individuals’ civic virtue as the focus independent variable, life satisfaction and happiness as the dependent variables, and countries’ mean civic virtue as a country-level moderator.

Model 1 (Table 3) presents the main effects of individual’s civic virtue and national mean civic virtue on happiness (left-hand panel) and life satisfaction (right-hand panel) while controlling for individual-level control variables. The effects of individual’s characteristics generally follow the pattern found in Study 1 and in the literature on subjective well-being and therefore are not discussed here in greater detail.

Table 3.

Multilevel Regression Analysis With Countries Civic Virtue, Study 2.

Variable	Happiness						Life satisfaction
	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3		Model 1		Model 2		Model 3
	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE
Intercept	2.91***	.03	2.91***	.03	2.91***	.03	6.62***	.10	6.62***	.10	6.62***	.08
Country-level variables
Country’s mean civic virtue	0.03	.05	0.04	.05	−0.02	.04	0.01	.16	0.06	.16	−0.16	.15
GDP per capita	—	—	—	—	3e-6*	1e-6	—	—	—	—	1e-5**	5e-6
Rule of law	—	—	—	—	0.05	.04	—	—	—	—	0.16	.13
Individualism index	—	—	—	—	5e-4	.002	—	—	—	—	0.003	.004
Individual-level variables
Age	−0.01***	5e-3	−0.01***	5e-3	−0.01***	5e-3	−0.01***	.002	−0.01***	.002	−0.01***	.002
Age²	1e-4***	1e-5	1e-4***	1e-5	1e-4***	1e-5	4e-4***	5e-5	4e-4***	5e-5	4e-4***	5e-5
Male	−0.02**	.01	−0.02**	.01	−0.02**	.01	−0.05*	.02	−0.05*	.02	−0.05*	.02
Employed	0.01	.01	0.01	.01	0.01	.01	0.002	.02	0.002	.02	0.002	.02
Unemployed	−0.11***	.02	−0.11***	.02	−0.11***	.02	−0.41***	.06	−0.41***	.06	−0.41***	.06
Married	0.24***	.01	0.24***	.01	0.24***	.01	0.48***	.03	0.48***	.03	0.48***	.03
Single	0.09***	.01	0.09***	.01	0.09***	.01	0.18***	.03	0.18***	.03	0.18***	.03
Primary education	−0.08***	.02	−0.08***	.02	−0.08***	.02	−0.26**	.04	−0.26**	.04	−0.26**	.04
Secondary education	−0.02**	.01	−0.02**	.01	−0.02**	.01	−0.08***	.02	−0.08***	.02	−0.08***	.02
Income	0.22***	.02	0.22***	.02	0.22***	.02	0.90***	.07	0.90***	.07	0.90***	.07
Personal religiosity	0.07***	.01	0.07***	.01	0.07***	.01	0.19***	.03	0.19***	.03	0.19***	.03
Confidence in the government	0.06***	.01	0.06***	.01	0.06***	.01	0.23***	.02	0.23***	.02	0.23***	.02
Civic virtue	0.01***	.003	0.02***	.003	0.02***	.003	0.08***	.01	0.08***	.01	0.08***	.01
Civic Virtue × Country’s mean civic virtue	—	—	0.01*	.004	0.01*	.004	—	—	0.05*	.02	0.05*	.02
Variance components
Var (intercept)	0.050 (0.222)		0.049 (0.222)		0.036 (0.189)		0.567 (0.749)		0.561 (0.749)		0.341 (0.584)
Var (civic virtue)	0.0004 (0.019)		0.0003 (0.018)		0.0003 (0.018)		0.007 (0.081)		0.006 (0.077)		0.006 (0.077)
Var (residual)	0.420 (0.648)		0.420 (0.648)		0.420 (0.648)		4.194 (2.048)		4.194 (2.048)		4.194 (2.048)

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Model 1 (Table 3) shows that high civic virtue is related to higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction, b = .01, p < .001 and b = .08, p < .001, respectively. A chi-square test of the variance components of individuals’ civic virtue suggests that this is not true for all the countries in our sample. Results identify significant variability among countries in terms of their association between civic virtue and happiness/life satisfaction, var = .0004, SD = .02, χ²(72) = 304.53, p < .001, and var = .007, SD = .08, χ²(72) = 460.03, p < .001, respectively.

Do country differences in national levels of civic virtue explain these variations? To answer this question, in Model 2, we included a cross-level interaction effect between individual- and country-level civic virtue. The results show that the positive effect of individual’s civic virtue was stronger in countries with higher rather than lower mean civic virtue, b = .01, p < .05 for happiness and b = .05, p < .05 for life satisfaction. Hence, civically virtuous individuals are more satisfied with life in countries with a high average civic virtue than they would be in countries with low civic virtue; in contrast, more fraudulent individuals are better off in countries where the justification-of-fraud level is high than they would be in countries with strong civic norms (see Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2.

The effect of an individual’s civic virtue on happiness, estimated for countries with different levels of mean civic virtue.

Figure 3.

The effect of an individual’s civic virtue on life satisfaction, estimated for countries with different levels of mean civic virtue.

As in Study 1, we used the Johnson–Neyman technique to determine the region of significance for a country’s mean civic virtue (Preacher et al., 2006). The analyses yielded the following lower and upper bounds of region of significance on country’s mean civic virtue: happiness, lower bound −57.74 (the simple slope at the lower bound was b = −.47, p = .05), upper bound −.91 (the simple slope at the upper bound was b = .01, p = .05) and life satisfaction, lower bound −18.15 (the simple slope at the lower bound was b =− .82, p = .05), upper bound −.78 (the simple slope at the upper bound was b = .04, p = .05). It is crucial to note that the actual range of a country’s mean civic virtue spanned from −1.35 to 1.05 (mean-centered). Consequently, the lower bounds of the region are outside of the actual range of the scale, meaning that the significant effect of individual’s civic virtue on well-being was restricted to countries with a national level of civic virtue equal or above −.91 (for happiness) and −.78 (for life satisfaction), which is approximately 1.5 standard deviations below the mean. In other words, an individual’s level of civic virtue does not significantly affect that individual’s well-being in countries with a low mean civic virtue but has a significant positive impact on the individual’s well-being in average- and high-civic-virtue countries. Specifically, in high-civic-virtue countries, fraudulent individuals are significantly worse off than their virtuous counterparts.

Finally, to see whether any of the other national characteristics conflate with the interaction effect we found, in Model 3, we entered GDP per capita, institutional quality, and individualism as predictors. These variables did not affect the interaction effect between individual and national civic virtue in any way, b_{(Interaction Civic Virtue × Mean Civic Virtue)} = .01, p < .05 for happiness and b_{(Interaction Civic Virtue × Mean Civic Virtue)} = .05, p < .05 for life satisfaction. We also tested for interactions between individuals’ civic virtue and individualism: Individualism was not associated with the relationship between individuals’ civic virtue and their level of life satisfaction (b_{Civic Virtue × Individualism} = .0002, p = .561). However, it was a moderator in the analysis of happiness (b_{Civic Virtue × Individualism} = .0002, p = .042), suggesting that the positive effect of civic virtue on happiness is stronger in individualistic countries compared with collectivistic countries. Yet, the analysis of the interaction between individualism and individuals’ civic virtue with the original scores of individualism (i.e., based on the data of 55 countries, without imputed scores) produced no significant results. Given the instability of the interaction between civic virtue and individualism, we refrain from drawing major conclusions for these variables and encourage future studies to probe for it using a larger sample of countries.

Hence, we can conclude that the positive relationship between civic virtue and well-being depends on the degree to which virtue is socially rewarded and free-riding is justified, regardless of a country’s wealth, individualism, and institutional quality.

General Discussion

Prior research has established a positive association between virtue and subjective well-being, but the universality of this relationship across countries and cultures has not been fully examined. Our studies together went beyond the previous work and have shown that the positive relationship between civic virtue and happiness/life satisfaction is not universal. Using a country’s level of antisocial punishment and mean civic virtue as indicators of the country’s normative climate, we have demonstrated that in countries where excessive generosity is punished, virtuous individuals are no longer happier than their more fraudulent counterparts.

So, why does being good sometimes turn out to be bad for one’s well-being? To explain, we draw on social norms and person–environment fit research, which suggests that deviating from social and cultural norms can increase the risk of derogation and social exclusion, and thus can seriously undermine psychological well-being (Fulmer et al., 2010; Gebauer, Sedikides, & Neberich, 2012; Stavrova et al., 2011; Stavrova et al., 2012). Hence, in countries where antisocial punishment is common and ethically questionable behaviors are justified, being virtuous is no longer related to happiness/life satisfaction. On the contrary, in a society in which civic virtue is normative, fraudulent individuals are worse off than their virtuous counterparts because of the departure from local cultural norms.

In virtuous societies, virtuous individuals are not only more likely to build a positive reputation and benefit from social approval, but they might also receive more help and social support in times of need—a mechanism called indirect reciprocity (Nowak & Sigmund, 2005). Moreover, a society’s civic norms may be internalized by an individual, with the result being that virtuous behavior not only brings social rewards but also personal satisfaction from conforming to personal self-ideals (Sherman & Cohen, 2006). We speculate that these mechanisms underlie our findings, and we encourage future research to provide a more fine-grained analysis of this effect and its process, as well as to probe for it in other domains of virtue (e.g., altruism in interpersonal relations). It is also interesting to note that in the majority of countries studied (see “Study 2” section), the relationship between civic virtue and well-being is positive. Extending our analysis to a larger number of countries might be helpful to get a more precise estimate of the degree to which this positive association is actually widespread. Nonetheless, our analyses have shown that the magnitude of the relationship between civic virtue and well-being is regulated by the normative features of the national culture.

More generally, our findings provide further support for the existing cross-cultural conformity and person–environment fit literature and show that the underlying psychological phenomenon—benefits from conformity, fit, or similarity—exists across different life domains such as personality and values (Fulmer et al., 2010; Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000) as well as religiosity, marital, or employment status (Soons & Kalmijn, 2009; Stavrova et al., 2011; Stavrova et al., 2012, 2013).

Our results are interesting with respect to the motivational sources of virtuous behavior. Psychologists and social scientists alike have long been interested in the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic motives for prosocial behavior (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2000; Frey & Jegen, 2001). Individuals’ underlying motivations for virtue might be roughly differentiated into a desire for an intrinsic reward (e.g., virtue is personally valued; hence, being virtuous is intrinsically rewarding) and a desire for an extrinsic reward (e.g., if virtue is socially approved, then being virtuous is rewarded by the society). Obviously, in cultures that enforce virtue, both types of motivations are likely to be salient, whereas in cultures where virtue does not represent the normative behavior, virtuous individuals are deprived of external rewards. Consequently, as our findings indicate, virtuous individuals living in cultures that do not reward virtue and prosociality are less happy than their counterparts in cultures that provide such rewards.

At first glance, the effects reported here might seem small. Yet, the simple slope analysis presented in Figure 3 provides a better understanding of the strength of the effects of civic virtue in different countries. It shows that individuals with relatively low scores in civic virtue and who live in a country where the mean civic virtue is one standard deviation above the mean are approximately .30 points (on a 10-point scale) less satisfied than if they would have been in a country where the mean civic virtue is one standard deviation below the mean. This difference reaches approximately .80 points if one compares the countries with the highest and the lowest mean civic virtue. For comparison, this almost equates to the difference that an average person would experience if his or her income increased by one standard deviation.

We are aware of the measurement issues (e.g., understanding and translation problems) that inevitably arise when one measures attitudes cross-culturally. However, because we did not compare countries’ means directly but rather the association between individuals’ civic virtue and their happiness/life satisfaction across countries, it is difficult to simply attribute our results to response biases. Moreover, the robustness of our results against individual- and country-level control variables provides additional support to our findings.

In this research, we combined two kinds of data: Individuals’ responses to survey questions about their civic virtue and happiness/life satisfaction (collected in a variety of countries using representative samples) on one hand, and country-level measures of behavior in experimental games as an indicator of national civic norms on the other. This combination of behavioral and survey data enhances the external validity of our findings and makes them more convincing, as survey- and behavior-based measures of the cultural normative climate yielded similar results. Indeed, other researchers have attempted to integrate behavior-based measures of cultural norms in cross-cultural research (Murray, Trudeau, & Schaller, 2011), and this method certainly has future potential for cross-national research.

It might be interesting to consider our hypothesis in light of the research on migration. Our results imply that migrants who fit well into the host culture should experience an increase in well-being after migration compared with their less well-fitting counterparts. This effect has indeed been established in cross-cultural studies showing that immigrants whose culture of origin is similar to their host culture show a higher level of psychological adjustment compared with migrants from more distant cultures (Furnham & Bochner, 1982; Polek, Wöhrle, & van Oudenhoven, 2010). Thus, examining migrants’ civic virtue and well-being before and after migration to cultures that fit their personal level of civic virtue to a higher or lower extent would provide a very strict test of our hypothesis and advance cross-cultural research on migration.

On a more general level, our results might help to explain the stability of national differences in civic virtuous behavior such as tax compliance (Alm & Torgler, 2006). Societies in which fraudulent individuals receive better treatment and are happier than their virtuous counterparts provide less motivation for civic virtue and are consequently doomed to lower levels of civic behavior. Public policy should give priority to breaking this vicious cycle, as civic virtue is part of a country’s social capital and can thus contribute to its human and economic development (Fetchenhauer & Vegt, 2001; Knack & Keefer, 1997).

A related intriguing question is why countries differ in civic virtue. A quick examination of the correlation of civic virtue with other national characteristics shows that wealthy countries with high institutional quality tend to have higher levels of civic virtue (r = .19, p = .10 and r = .30, p = .01). However, there is evidence that wealth is more likely to be a result of rather than a cause of civic virtue (Fetchenhauer & Wittek, 2006), with a high level of civic cooperation, trust, and honesty leading to greater economic development. We suggest that researchers interested in the determinants of cultural differences might take ecological differences into consideration as well. Although identifying the reasons of cross-cultural differences in civic virtue is beyond the scope of this work, we can assume that country differences in civic virtue might be driven by regional differences in environmental pressures, such as harsh climatic conditions or high pathogen prevalence (Murray et al., 2011; Schaller & Murray, 2008). For example, prior research has shown that demanding environments can foster selfishness unless the society possesses enough economic resources to cope with environmental stress (Van de Vliert, Van der Vegt, & Janssen, 2009).

Regardless of the source of cultural differences in civic virtue, an important theoretical implication of our results is that deviations from one’s own cultural standards might undermine subjective well-being. Hence, Aristotle’s idea of virtue as a means to happiness does not hold true in countries where virtue is punished by one’s fellow citizens.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mario Gollwitzer for his advice and helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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