Humans
How physical pain helps ease a guilty conscience, plus more in this week's news
By Science News
Feeling good, nationally
A sense of personal well-being, typically assumed to depend on factors such as job status, income and close relationships, instead hinges on satisfaction with one’s country for the world’s most impoverished people living mainly in non-Western countries, says a team of University of Illinois psychologists and Gallup pollsters. A survey of life satisfaction among residents of 128 nations, to appear in
Psychological Science
, indicates that poverty-stricken individuals see their home countries as especially central to their personal identities. Patriotism, a concept related to satisfaction with one’s country, deserves closer study as an influence on well-being, the researchers say. —