Happiness is most definitely a universal emotion; it may be expressed differently, but it has the same meaning for various cultures. It has been proven that happiness has multiple benefits such as longevity and career success (Heine 556), which are interconnected with ones subjective well-being. Although happiness and subjective well-being are interconnected and universal there are still cultural differences in surrounded by ones subjective well being. Subjective well-being can be referred to as the feeling of how satisfied one is with one's life (Heine 557). The two major components of subjective well-being are life satisfaction and affect balance (Diener, 1984; Diener & Larsen, 1993). Life satisfaction can also be seen as a global cognitive judgment of one's life, whereas affect balance refers to the relative preponderance of pleasant compared with unpleasant emotional experience (Suh et Al 1998). .
Individuals around the world are not equally satisfied with their lives, for a variety of reasons. It is clear to see the more obvious reasons ones well-being is not satisfied may have do with there conditions in which they live in, whether it be poverty, unfair government issues, and ones judgment of life satisfaction in some cultures the focus in primarily on the experiences, and in others they may be based more on social elements in others (Suh et Al 1998, 482). These ways focus on a similar approach amongst nations. A different aspect of looking at ones subjective well-being is in terms of individualist and collectivist. .
Triandis (1995) argued that the defining attributes of individualist Western samples include emphasis on hedonism, and the collectivist samples include emphasis on behavior consistent with norms, role, and obligations (Suh et Al 1998, 484). From this he concluded that in individualist relative to collectivist cultures, where individuals attend to and highly regard the internal elements of the self, a stronger correlation between internal feelings and life satisfaction may be found.
