Estudio de los conceptos cotidianos de happiness y felicidad desde un enfoque probabilístico
- Autores: Héctor Vargas Garrido
- Directores de la Tesis: José Miguel Fernández Dols (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ( España ) en 2010
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Carmelo Vázquez Valverde (presid.), Clara Molina (secret.), Itziar Fernández Sedano (voc.), José Luis Zaccagnini Sancho (voc.), Pilar Carrera Levillain (voc.)
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: Biblos-e Archivo
- Resumen
THE PROBLEM: Translations of emotion terms Translations of emotion terms among different languages are apparently easy and automatic in movies, news, books, etc. (e.g. happiness is typically translated as felicidad in Spanish). Nevertheless, behind these emotion terms there are ¿emotional concepts¿ what are constituted by the cluster of features that people have in mind when they think about these terms. Thus, translations work with emotion terms but neglect to what extend the emotional concepts behind them overlap each other.
Scientific literature on emotion has already produced an important number of sophisticated analyses about the problem of the equivalence between emotional concepts and the difficulties of translation (e.g., Mesquita, 2001; Mesquita & Frijda, 1992; Russell & Sato, 1995; Wierzbicka, 1986, 2004). To deal with this problem some researchers rely on dictionaries (e.g., Hupka, Lenton, & Hutchison, 1999), others apply back-translations (e.g., Eid & Diener, 2001; Scherer & Wallbott, 1994) and also, others state that there is no way to verify that testing materials are translated properly into different languages (Boroditsky, 2001). Accuracy of translation is not a mere methodological problem. It is also a relevant theoretical question, because translations predetermine both the explanation of empirical findings and the interpretations of cross-cultural differences.
1.1 The case of happiness The word happiness is related to an important emotion category in English-speaking societies. Many researchers highlight the fact that it is an emotion category with which people wish to experiment (Diener, 2000; Lyubomirsky, 2001). In this line it has been assumed that the English term happiness can be directly translated into other languages because there are neither linguistic nor cultural factors which alter the meaning of the emotional concept that it represents (Johnson-Laird & Oatley, 1989, 2000; Layard, 2005/2005).
However, there are several suggestions which raise some doubts about that point of view. Barschak (1951) stood out a methodological problem with translating the word happiness directly. Fellow psychologists in Germany and Switzerland had objections to her translation of happiness, which were later mirrored by the objections of some participants of her investigation. ¿As a matter of fact, the German-speaking psychologists were right. The translation of the word `happiness¿ is a difficult one¿. In the end, she decided to use two words in order to describe the English term in German: gleucklich and zufrieden, thus, participants could understand the same concept.
More recently, Wierzbicka (2004) observes that happiness and happy are used currently in everyday life in USA. Conversely the closest equivalent in Russian (scastie-scastlivyj), French (bonheur-heureux), Italian (felicitá-felice) and German (Glück-glücklich) are used in more exceptional situations.
Lu & Gilmour (2004; Lu, 2001) compare the everyday concepts of ¿happiness¿ in an American sample and the term ¿fu¿ or ¿fu qi¿ in Chinese. They found that ¿fu¿ or ¿fu qi¿ denotes a ¿harmonious homeostasis within the individual as well as between the individual and his surroundings¿. On the other hand, Americans place emphasis on the pursuit of happiness, which has a strong relationship with achievements and concrete goals. These, in turn, foster them towards independence and the sense of self-worth. Also, ¿fu¿ has a serious and introspective nuance which entails a positive and negative affect in a dialectic sense and ¿happiness¿, however, is related mainly to positive affect.
Uchida & Kitayama (2009) study the concepts of ¿happiness¿ in the USA and ¿shiawase¿ in Japan. They found that the Japanese placed emphasis in social harmony and self-improvement. These are processes in which it is necessary to consider both the positive and the negative affect because the negative affect is taken into account as feedback to improve their social adjustment and to modify that which affects their potential to develop. Regarding Americans, they placed more importance to the positive hedonistic experience, which is consistent with some of the symbols of American culture as the ¿frontier spirit¿ (the American identity), ¿the American dream¿ and the fact that they consider happiness to be the most sought-after personal goal.
Pflug (2009) compares the concept of ¿happiness¿ in South African students and ¿Glück¿ with German students. Among the most important findings is ¿Glück¿ covers both positive and negative affect in a holistic perspective, similar to what was observed in the Japanese. Furthermore, ¿Glück¿ has an important and salient characteristic related to ¿surprising events¿ probably due to the well-known fact that in German ¿Glück¿ also means ¿luck¿. In dictionaries, Glück is translated as both luck and happiness in English.
Thus, it seems crucial to investigate the emotional concepts that people have in their daily language further, for two reasons. Firstly, the emotional concepts studied have brought up some results significantly different to the expectations of the researchers (Chiasson, Dubé & Blondin, 1996; Galati, Manzano & Sotgiu, 2006; Lu & Gilmour, 2004; Pflug, 2009). Secondly, the research relating to the emotional experience of happiness sustains the interpretation of the concept as a matter pure subjectivity, referring to the interpretation of each interpreter or agent of happiness (or the terms used as a translation) (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005; Myers & Diener, 1985). This investigation therefore proposes to examine these emotional concepts in different languages to ascertain their true components, and indeed exploring how far these concepts really are equivalent across cultures and languages.
1.2 Happiness vs. felicidad English and Spanish are the third and fourth most spoken language in the world. In this article we illustrate the problems that may hinder the direct translation between felicidad and happiness.
Some researchers have observed significant differences between the cognitive content behind terms such as happiness and felicidad. Chiasson et al. (1996) used samples of students from El Salvador, the USA and Canada in their study. They posed the following questions: ¿What makes you happy?¿, ¿What does a person need to be happy?¿ and ¿What is a happy person? They did not specify the terms used because these researchers assumed universality of the concept, but found that Americans have a more everyday perspective of ¿happiness¿, and that they gave more importance to such items as ¿enjoying activities and life¿s little pleasures¿; Americans additionally feel more responsible for pursuing their own happiness, which is seen in giving more importance to ¿personal sources of power on their happiness¿, which includes elements such as ¿positive attitude toward life¿ and ¿personal strength¿. Regarding the Salvadorean sample, it considered various cognitive characteristics which were not found in the American sample, such as, ¿religious values¿ and ¿living in good sociopolitical conditions¿.
Galati, et al. (2006) studied the closest terms for happiness in Italy and Cuba. They did not indicate the terms used because they assumed that a universal concept exists behind the word happiness (and behind its translations in Italian and Spanish). They found that Spanish-speaking Cubans mentioned some unique features like "security" and "dealing with adversities "; additionally they considered more significant variables such as "partner" and ¿culture and knowledge". These facts permit the inference, at first glance, that behind "felicidad" would be a less intra-psychic concept than "happiness", as the Spanish-speakers' references to situational factors are more recurrent.
We suggest that the cluster of constitutive features of the concept behind the word felicidad can be quite different from the constitutive features of happiness.
2 STUDIES The overall strategy of this dissertation has consisted of analysing happiness and its usual Spanish translation (felicidad) in order to test whether they express directly comparable categories. The following studies focus on the analysis of emotion terms and the everyday concepts they express, but not on the emotional experience.
In order to doing that we assessed the features that people relate to these categories, the degree of typicality of these features, and the affective meaning of the terms. The aim of these studies was not to provide a comprehensive and exhaustive description of all the potential constitutive features of the category of `"happiness" and "felicidad" across contexts, but to provide an experimental test about wheter they overlap in their most prototypical features and whether they are equivalent to each other.
In Study 1, English and Spanish speakers completed a structured questionnaire that asked for detailed descriptions of happiness or felicidad. Our goal was to obtain as much information as possible about the content of the category named by each term. Study 2 analysed the internal structure of the two emotion categories by asking English and Spanish speakers to rate the degree of typicality of the features that were obtained in Study 1. The categories labelled by the words happiness and felicidad were then compared based on the relevance of their features. Once we mapped the internal structure of both categories, Study 3 tested whether the differences between the two concepts were also reflected in the affective meaning of the two terms based on participants¿ ratings on the dimensions of pleasure and arousal (Russell, Weiss, & Mendelson, 1989).
2.1 Approach Everyday emotion concepts have been characterized as having either of two possible structures. The classical perspective of concepts defines them in terms of necessary and sufficient features that create clear category boundaries (Johnson-Laird & Oatley, 1989; 2000). In contrast, the current mainstream approach to concepts is probabilistic, asserting that concepts have a graded structure and fuzzy boundaries (e.g., Fehr & Russell, 1984; Russell, 1991b; Russell & Fehr, 1994; Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O¿Connor, 1987). If everyday concepts are probabilistic categories, fixed translations of emotion terms are not the most feasible research strategy because categories do not contain a single unified essence, and the assignation of terms to categories is not fixed but probabilistic.
The current probabilistic approach is based on the work of Eleanor Rosch (1975; Mervis & Rosch, 1981), who in turn was inspired by the theories of the philosopher Wittgenstein. The contributions of probabilistic theories have been growing in strength in different branches of psychology. They have supported the classification of mental disorders and contributed to the understanding of central concepts such as personality traits and intelligence (Schneider, 2001; Russell, 1992a).
The theoretical and methodological foundations of our work are specific proposals to study emotional concepts from a probabilistic perspective, as brought out and applied by researchers such as Russell & Fehr (Fehr 1988, Fehr & Russell, 1984, 1991, Russell, 1992a, 1992b; Russell & Fehr, 1994). It has been additionally applied in the line of work that leads up to the present thesis, namely the comparison of emotional terms that are usually regarded as equivalent in different languages. Two pieces of research have already been carried out within this research program.
First, Cristina Casado (2003) compared the Spanish category emocionado with the categories expressed by several translations into English, Japanese and Arabic. She found that the Spanish term emocionado alludes to an emotion category that overlaps, to varying degrees, with several of its possible translations in other languages. Furthermore, she found that despite this, it would be necessary to use various emotion categories of other languages because none of them can be considered completely equivalent.
Secondly, Alejandra Hurtado de Mendoza and colleagues (Hurtado de Mendoza, Fernández-Dols, Parrott & Carrera, 2010) studied the categories vergüenza in Spanish and shame in English. She found some convergence between the two categories, but also great differences. "Shame" was evaluated as more unpleasant and less activation than "vergüenza." The closest English word for vergüenza would be embarrassment, although it falls short of representing the same category as the Spanish term. It has to be said that both shame and embarrassment are translated as just one term in Spanish: vergüenza.
Hurtado de Mendoza and her colleagues postulated the so-called fundamental translation error, whereby the direct one to one translation could refer to categories that are not entirely comparable. Specifically they argued that the work on shame and the best translations in other languages had been based on the assumption that these concepts are directly comparable. From these investigations it has been drawn conclusions with sociological and political implications. These findings have been linked with a number of other phenomena/ factors: the dimensions of Hofstede, religious backgrounds, degrees of civilization, the value of honour or independent or interdependent dimensions of selfconcept. However, they have consistently neglected the simple fact that when questioned, Americans and Spaniards display different concepts of shame and vergüenza, respectively. They claim that by using this two emotional concepts, the ¿US participants will imagine experiences such as committing moral transgressions whereas Spanish participants will imagine experiences such as being ridiculous in public¿.
2.2. Study 1 The goal of this study was to obtain a large body of information about the category named by the term felicidad in Spain and the category named by the term happiness in the USA through a free-evocation task.
2.2.1 Method Participants. Thirty-two students from Manhattan College, Georgetown University and Adelphi University New York (56.2% females; 43.8% males), and 101 students of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (56.4% females; 43.6% males). They respond voluntarily between June to September of 2007. Their ages ranged between 18 and 30 years (M= 21.8; SD=2.8).
Materials. Participants completed an adapted version of the Hurtado de Mendoza¿s et al. (2010) open-ended questionnaire.
The first section randomly asked students to explain the differences between feeling happiness (felicidad in the Spanish version) and feeling two other different emotions: one with positive valence and the another one with negative valence (e.g., when you feel happiness and when you feel fear, how are they different?). We selected for comparison two terms of prototypical emotion categories: joy (alegría) because its similarities with happiness encourage the participants to make an effort in order to compare them, and fear (miedo) because its oppossite valence and similar activation level (above the usual mood).
The participants were asked for both differences and similarities between the two emotional categories and to give a definition of terms that are being compared (either the term joy/alegría or fear/miedo).
Next, everyone was asked to give a definition for happiness (felicidad).
Procedure. Participants¿ answers were codified and analysed following the procedure developed by Fehr (1988). This procedure has been used in previous studies which used emotional concepts (Casado, 2003; Fehr & Russell, 1991; Hurtado de Mendoza et al., 2010) and it is based on extracting all lexical unities, whether they are words or sentences.
Lexical unities were grouped as features of the concept either ¿felicidad¿ or ¿happiness¿. It was considered different lexical unities as the same feature only if they were (a) grammatical variations of the same word, (b) words modified by adjectives, or (c) words or sentences judged to be identical or very similar in their meaning. For example, the feature ¿is agreeable, pleasant, good¿ includes participant¿ answers like: ¿agreeable¿, ¿pleasant¿, ¿it makes you feel good¿, ¿it is something good¿ and the feature ¿is plenitude¿ includes answers like: ¿feeling plenitude¿, ¿state/sensation of plenitude¿.
The references to the superordinate category of psychological process were excluded (e.g. ¿is an emotion¿, ¿is a feeling¿).
2.2.2 Results In both samples, participants referred to different components of an emotion script, such as causes or antecedents of the experience, appraisals, physiological reactions, behaviours and consequences. We extracted 149 features from the Spanish sample; 20 were mentioned by at least 5% of the students. In the USA sample we extracted 52 features of ¿happiness¿, 26 were mentioned by two or more participants.
In the end, it was obtained 35 features mentioned by at least 5% of either sample (see Table 1 at the end).
2.2.3 Discussion Results support a probabilistic approach to emotion concepts. There was no sharp break between central and less central features because they are structured in a gradual way (Mervis & Rosch, 1981).
The mental representation of "felicidad" seems to correspond to a desired state or ideal. In contrast, the information about "happiness" points towards a state of daily pleasure and optimism.
Chiasson et al. (1996) found that Americans place more importance on intrapsychic characteristics associated with "happiness". In our results, we also note the presence of intrapsychic elements in "happiness", which are not observed with the same emphasis in the case of "felicidad". Two examples of such elements are ¿when you are worry free¿ and ¿is optimism, hopeful or positive outlook¿.
Intrapsychic characteristics of "happiness" have also been observed by Lu & Gilmour (2004) and Uchida & Kitayama (2009), who describe that more than others, the Americans perceive themselves as being responsible for the pursuit their own happiness.
In short, our results converge with prior findings in the sense that "happiness" has markedly intrapsychic content related to everyday experience, is more accessible, and apparently corresponds to an important psychological resource in American culture. For its part, "felicidad", whilst having a high hedonic content, seems to be more connected to an ideal state, reserved for exceptional situations, linked to well-defined external events such as the achievement of important goals or objectives.
2.3 Study 2 In Study 2 we analysed the internal structure of the categories ``happiness¿¿ and ``felicidad¿¿ based on the degree of typicality of the 35 features obtained in Study 1.
2.3.1 Method Participants. One hundred and twenty undergraduate students from Manhattan College, Boston College and Oklahoma State University (66.7% females; 33.3% males; M=21.1 years; SD=2.59); and 120 students of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (52.5% females; 47.5% males; M=21.4; SD=2.36). Their ages ranged between 18 and 30 years. Questionnaires were answered voluntarily between January and March 2008.
Materials. Following procedures commonly used in the study of emotion concepts (e.g., Fehr & Russell, 1984; Hurtado de Mendoza et al., 2010; Russell & Fehr, 1994), we developed a forced-choice questionnaire aimed at finding the relevance of the constitutive features of ``happiness¿¿ and ``felicidad¿¿. In order to rely as much as possible on participant¿s own descriptions, the features were presented in sentences that participants had used to describe both categories in Study 1. Participants had to judge the extent to which each of 35 sentences was typical of ``happiness¿¿ or ``felicidad¿¿ using a zero-to-ten scale.
A final questionnaire¿s section asked participants to evaluate the level of happiness (felicidad) of the people they know and the level of happiness (felicidad) for themselves using a one-to-seven scale. Nevertheless, this information will not be used in this study.
Procedure. Participants were told that the questionnaire was aimed at defining happiness (for US participants) or felicidad (for Spanish participants), according to the following instructions (adapted from Fehr & Russell, 1984; Russell & Fehr, 1994):
In this study, we are looking for what people have in mind when they hear and use words. Consider the word ¿fruit¿. Close your eyes and imagine a ¿fig¿. Now imagine an ¿apple¿. Although you might still name the fig or the apple whith the term fruit, there is no doubt that the apple is a more typically used example in the category ¿fruit¿. Notice that the opinion as to which is the best example has nothing to do with one¿s own preferences. You might prefer a fig to an apple, but even so you will recognize that the apple is a more typical example of a ¿fruit¿.
The word we are interested in is HAPPINESS (FELICIDAD in the Spanish version). Next we will see a list of statements and you must indicate to us to what extent you feel they correspond to the category of ¿happiness¿.
The superior values (9-10) suggest that the statement is ¿very typical¿, the mid-ranging values (4-5-6) that is ¿somewhat typical¿ and the lowest values (0-1) imply that the statement is ¿not typical¿.
Don¿t worry about the reasons for your answer; we are only interested in your opinion.
2.3.2 Results Table 2 (at the end of this paper) lists the 35 features with their corresponding sentences, the average typicality ratings elicited by ¿happiness¿ and ¿felicidad¿ and the corresponding t-test. They are listed in descending order, based on the magnitude of the difference between the two average ratings.
Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) showed a significant main effect of the English vs. Spanish category on the ratings of the features, Hotelling¿s trace=2.01, F(1,198)=11.4, p<.001, ¿2 =.67. Independent samples t-test showed significant differences in the ratings of 25 out of the 29 compared features, although the magnitude of these differences varied considerably.
An additional analysis, combining our findings from Study 1 and Study 2, shows the degree of independence of the two Concepts. Following Fehr¿s (1988) rationale, if ¿happiness¿ and ¿felicidad¿ categories are largely independent, in this Study 2 participants should rate those features only mentioned by their own national sample as significantly more typical than the features mentioned by both English and Spanish speakers in Study 1. If happiness¿ and felicidad¿s categories are moderately independent, participants¿ ratings for the features only mentioned by their own national sample and for the features mentioned by the two national samples should be similar. If happiness¿ and felicidad¿s categories are minimally independent, participants should rate the features mentioned by the two national samples as significantly more typical than the features only mentioned by one sample.
We performed a mixed 3 x 2 ANOVA on the mean ratings of typicality from the Study 2 questionnaire, with Language (English, Spanish) as between-subjects factor and Type of Feature as within-subjects factor. Type of Feature was determined by Study 1: features mentioned by at least 5% of the American (but not the Spanish) sample, features mentioned by at least 5% of both the American and the Spanish sample, and features mentioned by at least 5% of the Spanish (but not the English) sample. Results revealed a marginal effect of Language, F(2, 476)=2.57, p<.11, ¿2 =.01, a significant effect of Type of Feature, F(2, 476)=74.7, p<.001, ¿2 =.24, and a significant interaction of Type of Feature and Language, F(2, 476)=14.74, p<.001, ¿2 =.06.
The interaction between Type of Feature and Language shows that there was a significant effect on the typicality ratings of the features mentioned only for ¿happiness¿ where USA participants rated their own features as much central than those mentioned only for Spain (M=6.48 vs. M=5.95; t(237)=-3.98, p<,001). In the Spanish sample the difference between features mentioned only for ¿felicidad¿ and those mentioned only for ¿happiness¿ do not have significant differences (M=6.74 vs. M=6.59; t(237) =-1.11, p<.226) (see Figure 1).
Follow-up within-subjects analyses showed that Spanish participants rated the features that were mentioned only for ¿felicidad¿ (M=6.74) as less typical than the features that were mentioned in both categories (M=6.90; t(119)=-1.99, p<.001). The American participants had a similar effect, shared features between ¿felicidad¿ and ¿happiness¿ are rated as more typical than those mentioned only for ¿happiness¿ (M=6.48 vs. M=7.07; t(119)=-6.85, p<.001). This complementary analysis shows a minimal independence between the features of the two categories.
2.3.3 Discussion Our findings can support two conclusions. Firstly, that the two groups typically respond differently to questionnaire items and that there are significant differences in mean scores in response to 23 of the 35 items. Secondly, that the features that make up the concepts of "happiness" and "felicidad" are minimally independent, this conclusion was obtained following Fehr¿s (1988) rationale for comparing emotional concepts. Specifically, we found that the main constituent features tend to be the same but are structured differently.
"Happiness" is associated with significantly more variable "is uplifting" as "felicidad" with "is plenitude". Consistently, "is plenitude" is less important for the U.S. sample (p<.01), and the same happens with "is uplifting" in the Spanish sample (p<.01). If we understand that "is uplifting" refers to a process of development or construction of something and "is plenitude", to a state resulting from the acquisition of something, we can see that "happiness" refers to a process and "felicidad" a state that involves the realization or obtaining something.
The feature ¿is momentary, just the moment, doesn¿t last long" is more associated with ¿felicidad" and the feature "is permanent, continuous" gets the higher score in "happiness". Internally, the Spanish attach more significance to the item "is momentary, just the moment, doesn¿t last long " than ¿is permanent, continuous" (p<.01). "Felicidad" seems significantly more episodic or shorter-lasting.
The property "is difficult to obtain" is fairly typical of "felicidad" (M = 7.12) but is one of the peripheral features of "happiness" (M = 5.07). The feature "is hard to define" is one of the core of "felicidad" (M = 7.85) but only slightly typical of "happiness" (M = 6.76). These records provide evidence to support that "happiness" has less complexity and is more accessible than "felicidad".
Other important findings. In the structure of "happiness", favourable external events and intrapsychic elements have equal importance, whereas in "felicidad", external events are definitely more important than intrapsychic components. ¿Happiness" is significantly more related to facial expressions, since the features "is to smile or laugh¿ and "is make others smile or laugh" show significantly higher scores in this category (ps<.01).
There are two characteristics that relate to personal strength or intrapsychic psychological sources. The two have a higher score and take a more typical position in "happiness": "is related to the way one deals with life (and its troubles)¿ and "is accepting things in life (everyone and everything)". This information is consistent with available information that happiness is an important value in the lives of Americans (Lu & Gilmour, 2004) and personal strengths are seen as an important source of happiness (Chiasson et al., 1996).
In summary, considering the strongest effects found by comparing and contrasting the two concepts, "happiness" is more about pursuing an objective process that is more accessible, everyday and less complex than "felicidad". It is more associated with expressions like laughter, is perceived to be akin to joy and has an intrapsychic psychological emphasis as a resource for life.
For its part, the concept of "felicidad" is perceived as a state associated with favourable external events, which involves a shorter time frame than "happiness." It is observed that it has major differences to alegría. It is less accessible, more complex and more difficult to obtain.
Our findings on the concept of "happiness" are consistent with previous studies. To express and feel the positive affect is much more desirable for Americans compared with other cultures (Diener, Suh, Smith & Shao, 1995; Lu & Gilmour, 2004). American also think of it more frequently (how do I feel about this?) and relate it to their daily lives (Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999; Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis, 1998). Metaphorically, as indicated by Kitayama & Markus (2000), the U.S. Declaration of Independence claims happiness is a cultural political mandate. However, this accessibility and day-to-day life quality of "happiness" is not present in an equivalent manner in the concept of "felicidad". This, besides having less important intrapsychic components, is a concept reserved for exceptional events.
2.4 Study 3 In this study we focused on the affective meaning of the emotion categories represented by happiness and felicidad through participants¿ ratings on the dimensions of pleasure and arousal. Emotion categories can be located in an affective space described by these two dimensions (see Russell, 1983; Russell et al., 1989).
2.4.1 Method Participants. Ninety US students from Michigan University and Manhattan College of New York (68.9% females, 28.8% males, 2.2% n/a; M= 21.0 years, SD=2.08); and 90 Spanish students of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (51.1% males, 48.9% females; M= 21.1 years, SD=2.37). Questionnaires were answered voluntarily between March and May 2008 by the American sample and during the month of November 2008 by the Spanish sample.
Materials. We administered the English version and the Spanish translation of the Affect Grid (Russell et al., 1989). The Grid allows participants to rate any emotional term along two orthogonal axes: the x-axis represents pleasure with values between 4 (maximum pleasure) and -4 (maximum displeasure); the y-axis similarly represents arousal with values between 4 (highest) and -4 (lowest).
Procedure. In order to make participants familiar with the instrument, they were asked to read carefully instructions that explained the meanings of the different areas of the affect grid, and how to use it. Once they were ready, participants were asked to place one emotion term on the Affect Grid. Thirty USA participants filled out the instrument by each one evaluated terms (happiness, joy and contentment) and the same was done by thirty Spanish for each one their nearest translations (felicidad, alegría, satisfacción).
2.4.2 Results We conducted an independent samples t-test between the pleasure and arousal ratings of the six evaluated terms. We also estimated the Euclidean distance on the affective space between these terms based on the average ratings on the pleasure and arousal dimensions. Figure 2 shows the terms¿ location in the affective space described by these two dimensions.
Intergroup comparisons. The terms which have the highest ratings in both dimensions are alegría (M=2.80, pleasure; M=2.57, arousal) for the Spanish sample and joy for the American sample (Ms=2.57 and M=1.90). The closest English term to alegría was joy (Euclidean distance of 0.71). Consistently, alegría does not have significant differences with joy in both dimensions (t(58)=0.59, p<.56; t(58)=1.54, p<.13). However, alegría has significant differences both with happiness (t(58)=2.37, p<.05; t(58)=3.77, p<.01) and with contentment (t(58)=3.29, p<.01; t(58)=4.17, p<.01).
. The terms which have the lowest ratings in both dimensions are satisfacción (Ms=1.50 y 1.03) and contentment (Ms=1.63 y M=0.67). The closest English term to satisfacción was contentment (Euclidean distance of 0.38). Satisfacción does not have significant differences neither with happiness (t(58)=-0.93, p<.35; t(58)=0.26, p<.79) nor with contentment (t(58)=-0.29, p<.77; t(58)=0.71, p<.48), but satisfacción has significant differences with joy in the pleasure dimension (t(58)=-2.19, p<.05; t(58)=-1.74, p<.09).
Regarding the relationship between felicidad (Ms=2.23 and 1.90) and happiness (Ms=1.93 and M=0.90), we observed that they have significant differences in the arousal dimension (t(58)=0.73, p<.47; t(58)=2.18, p<.05). Accordingly, felicidad is closest to the English term joy (distance of 0.34) and happiness is closest to the Spanish term satisfacción (0.45). Felicidad does not have significant differences with joy (t(58)=-0.76, p<.44; t(58)=0.00, p<.99) but it does in the arousal dimension with contentment (t(58)=1.51, p<.14; t(58)=2.62, p<.03).
Within-group comparisons. Regarding to the Spanish terms, the closest term to felicidad was alegría (0.88) and the furthest was satisfacción (1.14). Felicidad does not have significant differences neither with alegría not with satisfacción, both in pleasure (t(58)=-1.56, p<.12 and t(58)=1.59, p<.11) and arousal (t(58)=-1.62, p<.11 and t(56)=1.81, p<.08). Alegría and satisfacción have the longest distance (2.02) and there are significant differences in both dimensions between them (t(48)=3.07, p<.01; t(54)=3.31, p<.01).
Regarding to the English terms, the closest term to happiness was contentment (0.38) and the furthest was joy (1.19). Happiness does not have rated differences with contentment (t(58)=0.75, p<.46; t(58)=0.47, p<.64) but it does in the arousal dimension with joy (t(58)=-1.44, p<.15; t(58)=-2.09, p<.05). Joy and contentment have the longest Euclidean distance (1.55) and there are significant differences in both dimensions between them (t(58)=2.17, p<.05; t(58)=2.51, p<.05).
2.4.3 Discussion The grid shows the differences in the affective meanings of both terms. Felicidad appears to have significantly more activation than happiness (p<.05) and is further from the state "neutral medium or ordinary" (represented by the centre point, coordinate 0.0). Of a possible maximum travel of 5.66 (coordinate 4.4), felicidad has a distance to the origin of 2.93 (51.8%) meanwhile happiness is closer to the feeling "neutral, medium or ordinary" at a distance of 2.13 (37.6%) (see Figure 2 at the end).
The fact that happiness is shown to have greater qualities of accessibility and relation with everyday life than felicidad is consistent with our findings in previous studies and in previous work.
First, regarding the differences in the emotional accessibility of these categories there is direct evidence. Fehr & Russell (1984) in a study of emotion concepts from a probabilistic approach, found in a sample of 200 English-speakers that 76% freely mentioned happiness as the most typical example of emotion, while 41% mentioned joy. For their part, Fernandez-Dols, Carrera, Hurtado de Mendoza, & Oceja (2007) found in a sample of 66 Spanish students that participants identified the most typical example as being alegría (85%), while felicidad enjoyed a mention of 26% (alegría is considered the closest term in Spanish for joy).
Secondly, the Americans consider the personal assessment of happiness as particularly important (Heine et al., 1999) and relate it to everyday features such as ¿is when you like what¿s going on, what you have, what has come your way¿ (Study 2) or ¿enjoying activities and life¿s little pleasures¿ (Chiasson et al., 1996).
Our results in Study 3 indicate that felicidad is less accessible and less everyday than happiness. A practical example of this finding occurs in the following situation: when Spanish-speakers visit an English speaking country, they are often surprised by the everyday use of terms such as happiness or happy. A use that does not occur in Spanish speaking countries because felicidad and feliz are more limited and less frequent.
3 GENERAL DISCUSSION Some researches on the emotional experience of happiness claim that they worked on a theme which already was of interest in ancient Greece, where it was known as eudaimonia (Averill & More, 2000). This reasoning assumes that ¿happiness¿ is a transcendental concept that has been studied for thousands of years from the time of Aristotle (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Lyubomirsky, 2001).
However, other researchers argue that treating the concepts of ¿happiness¿ and ¿eudaimonia¿ as direct equivalents could be an error (Diener, 1984; Griffin, 2007; Haybron, 2000; Ryff, 1989). The Greek concept alluded to ¿the state of having an objectively valuable life" (Griffin, 2007), which was the end goal of all human action and implied experiencing ¿the feelings accompanying behaviour in the direction of, and consistent with, one¿s true potential" (Waterman, quoted in Ryff, 1989). This concept differs considerably from the concept of ¿happiness¿ used in modern English, which has a strong element of hedonistic intrapsychic, related to pleasurable emotional experiences, and has been used in multiple studies in the following way "[t]aking the good with the bad, how happy and contented are you on the average now, compared with other people?" (Lykken & Tellegen, 1996).
The above description exemplifies the most important issue raised by this work, that is, that the interpretation of the English term is equivalent to the classical Greek word could be the same bias that is found when intercultural research consider that the term happiness is equivalent to terms litteraly translated in other languages, such as Spanish felicidad, Arabic saadah, or German Glück, etc. Indeed, there is information available suggesting that the emotional concept behind the English term happiness is not exactly equivalent to the concepts behind its closest translation in Chinese (Lu & Gilmour, 2004), Japanese (Uchida & Kitayama, 2009) and German (Barschak, 1951; Pflug, 2009; Wierzbicka, 2004).
Our findings with the terms happiness and felicidad can support that both emotional concepts share most of their constituve features (they are minimally independent) but they are structured differently (statistical differences in 23 out of 35 studied features).
Thus, both concepts involve movement towards objectives or achievements, with high hedonic content, which is a recurrent feature in Western cultures (Nisbett, 2003), but the focus is on different aspects: one in the process to achieve and the another in the pleasure of achievement itself.
"Happiness" is more related to an intrapsychic process of pursuit their own goals, while "felicidad" is more identified with specific events that produce pleasure. "Happiness" is more related to the everyday life, more accessible and less complex, while "felicidad" is more difficult to obtain, has a shorter duration and is farther from daily activities because it is associated with exceptional states.
This situation is relevant for research purposes. The words happy and happiness (and its closest translation) are used in many measuring instruments, such as the questionnaire for the Happiness Measures (Fordyce, 1988), the Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999) and The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Hills & Argyle, 2002), among others. It is therefore important to study these concepts because psychometric properties are used for cultural comparisons which rely on the equivalency of the everyday concepts. Since the subject¿s answers to survey could depend on their cognitive representation of emotional concepts such as ¿felicidad¿, ¿happiness¿, ¿Glück¿, etc.
