They have found that the kind of pride that makes people happiest is when they feel they ‘belong’ to a country, regardless of ethnicity.
[Note: This article was originally posted on December 15th, 2011. The IFNM website was attacked by hackers and many articles are now gone from the archives. As a public service, IFNM is now reposting said articles.]
Feeling proud to be British makes you feel good about life in general, according to scientists.
They found that the kind of pride that makes people happiest is when they feel they ‘belong’ to a country, regardless of ethnicity.
Researchers studied interviews of 41,000 residents of 31 European nations and found civic pride was most linked to a general feeling of well being.
This is often because those who felt a country’s laws, traditions and institutions made them feel they belonged often had a better quality of life overall.
The study was conducted jointly by political scientists and sociologists at Washington’s American University and Belgium’s Catholic University.
They found the links between national pride and happiness were high across Europe.
But they were highest where a person felt the country in which they lived contributed to their overall lifestyle rather than their own ethnic background.
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