Prof Victoria Reyes García (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies) shared findings on subjective wellbeing among small-scale societies at the latest of the Wellbeing Research Centre’s Seminar Series.
Her work examines the levels of, and factors to support, life satisfaction and other measures of subjective wellbeing among indigenous peoples and local communities across 19 globally distributed sites.
Watch the full presentation on the Centre’s YouTube channel.
Prof Daniel J. Benjamin (UCLA) shared findings on techniques to improve subjective scales at the latest of the Wellbeing Research Centre’s Seminar Series.
His work, presented under the title ‘Adjusting for Scale-Use Heterogeneity on Subjective Scales’, tests multiple techniques on fine-tuning the validity and reliability of subjective scales, such as those used to measure wellbeing.
Watch the full presentation on the Centre’s YouTube channel.
But what should you do if you don’t like the way the world is going? Is there anything you can do?
The obvious answer is to rage, doomscroll and hope for the next election. But the obvious answer is no longer an option once we realize the antidote to Trump is to build a happier, higher trust society. Drawing on my dual experience as a moral philosopher and happiness researcher, I’d like to suggest some alternative ways you can fight back.
I had come to Finland to see whether I could bring happiness back to America with me. Finland has topped the World Happiness Report for the past eight years, a merit largely attributed to the Nordic welfare state, trust in the government, and public policies like free education and universal health care. Under these criteria, living in the United States (No. 24 on the list) is practically a recipe for misery. But the Finns also find contentment in more attainable ways, such as their close relationship with nature (74 percent of the country is covered by forest) and visiting the sauna daily (there are three million saunas for a population of 5.5 million).
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve also provides some hope in this global era of crisis, great anxiety and dread. He explains that the 2025 World Happiness Survey shows that people across the world are generally much kinder and caring than is commonly believed.
Finns tend to accept the accolade of supreme happiness, bestowed on them by the World Happiness Report in March 2025 for the eighth time in a row, with a collective shrug and eye roll. But Finnish travel operators are celebrating as travellers increasingly make the connection between Finland and happiness, hoping to come and experience that Finnish brand of happiness for themselves.
Do you trust your government? Do you trust your neighbors or the strangers you meet on the street? Do you trust the media? Or your teachers? Who we trust is changing. And trust in our institutions and our fellow citizens is in steep decline. That’s according to the World Happiness Report. Who we trust can have a huge impact on our behavior and our happiness.
So what’s behind the dramatic changes in how we trust? And can we learn to trust in a smarter way? We ask advice from Rachel Botsman, the Trust Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and author of How to Trust and Be Trusted.
Readers have told the BBC about strangers’ random acts of kindness, following research that found people underestimated the good intentions of others.
In an experiment by the University of British Columbia, researchers deliberately lost wallets to see how many would be returned. Almost twice as many were handed in than was predicted by people who had been surveyed for the World Happiness Report.
Last week’s International Day of Happiness lives on. Not so much in the US, where the chaotic uncertainty engineered by Donald Trump and his Project 2025 supporters is creating misery, and not just for the public servants fired or suspended from their jobs.
It might also be difficult to see how the goal of happiness is rated in Whitehall when the UK sits only one place above the US in the United Nations’ annual world happiness index. The UK slipped from the 20th most happy country to 23rd in this year’s index, while the US dropped one position to 24th, both well behind the Nordic countries, which lead the world, and many others including Mexico, Australia and Belgium.
Australians are no longer happy little Vegemites, according to new research.
The latest World Happiness Report shows Australia has failed to make the top 10 world’s happiest countries list.
After just scraping into the top tier in 2024, the report now ranks Australia at 11th, with New Zealand just behind in 12th spot.
Nordic countries continue to lead the rankings, with Finland, Denmark and Iceland listed as the top three happiest nations.
