Not everyone can take a leisurely drive to the beach on a whim with a reliable car and the latest smartphone.
Freedom means more when one has the means to enjoy it.
In A Nutshell
- Autonomy works everywhere, but better in rich countries: Personal freedom predicts happiness across 64 of 66 nations studied, but national wealth explains 38% of why the effect is stronger in wealthier societies.
- Survival changes priorities: When people struggle to meet basic needs, having control over life choices matters less than simply having options. Wealthier nations emphasize self-expression over survival, amplifying autonomy’s happiness boost.
- Can’t separate wealth from culture: Individualistic countries also showed stronger autonomy-happiness links, but researchers couldn’t untangle whether wealth or individualism drives the effect.
- Nearly universal except three outliers: In a study of 100,000 people across 66 countries, only Nigeria and Lebanon showed no autonomy-happiness link, while Iraq showed no autonomy-life satisfaction connection.
Personal autonomy boosts happiness worldwide, but a sweeping international study reveals it delivers more joy in wealthier countries where people aren’t consumed by survival concerns.
Researchers analyzed nearly 100,000 people across 66 nations and discovered something surprising: while having control over your life choices contributes to wellbeing everywhere, national wealth explains 38% of the difference in how strongly autonomy affects happiness between countries. In wealthier societies, personal freedom and happiness connect far more powerfully than in poorer nations.
“When life is a constant struggle for survival, people tend to put less emphasis on agentic values,” the researchers explain in the scientific journal Social Indicators Research. Put another way, when you’re worried about putting food on the table, having freedom to choose your path matters much less.
The findings come from the World Values Survey, which gathered data between 2017 and 2023 from representative samples across all inhabited continents. Participants rated how much “free choice and control” they felt over their lives, then reported their happiness and life satisfaction.
Why Wealth Strengthens Freedom’s Link to Happiness
People in affluent nations who reported high autonomy showed much steeper increases in life satisfaction compared to their counterparts in lower-income countries with similar autonomy levels. National wealth explained 30% of the variance in this relationship between countries.
The pattern held even after controlling for age, gender, income, and education. Something about living in a wealthier society is associated with stronger connections between personal freedom and feeling good about life.
As countries develop economically, a value shift occurs. When survival becomes less precarious, people naturally place greater importance on self-expression and personal agency. This cultural emphasis strengthens the psychological payoff when people experience autonomy.
Autonomy Predicts Happiness Almost Everywhere
Despite the wealth effect, autonomy showed positive associations with wellbeing across almost the entire globe. More specifically, 64 out of 66 countries for happiness, and 65 out of 66 countries for life satisfaction.
Only three countries bucked the trend: Nigeria and Lebanon showed no significant link between autonomy and happiness, while Iraq showed no connection between autonomy and life satisfaction. Even in these outliers, autonomy still correlated positively with the other wellbeing measure.
Autonomy emerged as the strongest individual predictor of both outcomes overall, outperforming age, gender, income, and education.
Culture and Individualism Add Another Layer
National wealth wasn’t the only moderator. Individualism measured through behavioral indicators like fertility rates, living arrangements, and marriage-to-divorce ratios also strengthened the autonomy-wellbeing link.
In individualistic societies, autonomy explained 36% of the variance in happiness slopes and 21% of the variance in life satisfaction slopes between countries.
The complication: national wealth and individualism correlated so strongly (-.86) that researchers couldn’t fully disentangle which factor drives the effect. Individual living arrangements and personal transportation become more feasible as countries grow wealthier.
“Do both contribute, is one merely a confounding factor, or are both different facets of a broader modernization phenomenon?” the researchers ask.
Resolving an Old Debate
The findings help clarify both sides of a long-standing psychology debate. Self-determination theory argues autonomy represents a universal human need, hardwired by evolution for better self-regulation. The near-universal positive relationship across 66 countries supports this claim.
But theorists who emphasized culture’s role were right too. Wealth and individualism appear to shape how strongly autonomy influences wellbeing, proving context matters.
For policymakers, the research suggests autonomy-supportive policies benefit citizens worldwide, but those benefits register more strongly in developed nations. In lower-income countries, policies addressing material security might reasonably take priority over those promoting personal choice.
Data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic adds complexity, as lockdowns dramatically restricted personal autonomy worldwide. However, the researchers note that previous research suggests the pandemic’s impact on national life satisfaction was relatively limited.
Paper Notes
Study Limitations
The study acknowledges several limitations. The autonomy measure used a single item asking about “free choice and control,” which researchers note may conflate two related but distinct concepts: freedom of choice and locus of control. Single-item measures can work well for relatively straightforward constructs, but multi-item scales would provide more robust measurement. The cross-sectional nature of the World Values Survey prevents any causal claims. While other research using experimental and longitudinal designs has shown autonomy causes increased wellbeing, this study can only examine relationships between variables at one point in time. The wellbeing measures focused exclusively on happiness and life satisfaction, leaving out other important components like sense of meaning, harmony, or psychological richness that may relate differently to autonomy. The study also cannot determine whether national wealth or individualism drives the moderating effect due to their high correlation. Approximately 10% of variance in happiness and life satisfaction occurred at the national level, with the remaining 90% stemming from individual differences within countries. Data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic adds complexity, as lockdowns dramatically restricted personal autonomy worldwide, though the researchers note that previous research suggests the pandemic’s impact on national life satisfaction was relatively limited.
Funding and Disclosures
The study received no specific funding, though it was supported by the Polish National Science Centre under grant 2020/38/E/HS6/00357. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Publication Details
Martela F, Joshanloo M, Krys K. Autonomy is Associated with Well-being Across the World, but more Strongly in Wealthy and Individualistic Countries. Social Indicators Research. 2026;181:27. doi:10.1007/s11205-025-03762-z. Lead author Frank Martela is affiliated with the School of Science at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. Co-author Mohsen Joshanloo works in the Department of Psychology at Keimyung University in Daegu, South Korea. Co-author Kuba Krys is with the Institute of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.
