Rather, both excessive freedom and excessive constraint are costly to societal well-being. We argue that neither position is correct. The age-old question remains: Does evidence favor freedom over constraint for societal well-being, or vice versa? However, despite much philosophizing, there has been surprisingly little empirical data brought to bear on this question. In the United States today, modern examples of this age-old tension include the controversy surrounding the Patriot Act in the years following 9/11 and the recent debates concerning the legitimacy of the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance techniques. They were found in Plato’s Republic, continued among Chinese and European philosophers, and extend into the modern era (see also ). Proponents of constraint insist that rules and regulations are critical for creating a secure and stable society that enables happiness and progress. Advocates of the importance of freedom claim that autonomy allows individuals to self-actualize and maximizes societal happiness and economic progress. In fields as diverse as psychology, sociology, and political and economic philosophy, there is a long-standing debate concerning the best way to organize societies. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense or the National Science Foundation. Airforce grant FA955-01-41-0020, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant DGE 1322106 ( ), and by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number SMA-1416651. This file can be found under Supplemental Information.įunding: This research was supported in part by the US Army Research Laboratory and the US Army Research Office ( ) under Grant W911NF-08-1- 0144, U.S. All data, with labels, are contained within an XLSX file. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedĭata Availability: All data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. Received: OctoAccepted: ApPublished: June 5, 2015Ĭopyright: © 2015 Harrington et al. Accordingly, it is time to shift the debate away from either constraint or freedom and focus on both in moderation.Ĭitation: Harrington JR, Boski P, Gelfand MJ (2015) Culture and National Well-Being: Should Societies Emphasize Freedom or Constraint? PLoS ONE 10(6):Īcademic Editor: Martin Voracek, University of Vienna, AUSTRIA This supports the notion that a balance between freedom and constraint results in the best national outcomes. Relative to moderate nations, very permissive and very constrained nations exhibit worse psychosocial outcomes (lower happiness, greater dysthymia, higher suicide rates), worse health outcomes (lower life expectancy, greater mortality rates from cardiovascular disease and diabetes) and poorer economic and political outcomes (lower gross domestic product per capita, greater risk for political instability). Should they emphasize individual freedom and autonomy or security and constraint? Contrary to proponents who tout the benefits of one over the other, we demonstrate across 32 nations that both freedom and constraint exhibit a curvilinear relationship with many indicators of societal well-being. Throughout history and within numerous disciplines, there exists a perennial debate about how societies should best be organized.
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