Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Indonesians are the least unhappy: inferiority complex?

Unspun's "Not unhappy is the Indonesian employee" discusses a global employee survey. One of the findings was

"Those with the lowest percentages of employees feeling unhappy or very unhappy are Indonesia (3 per cent), India (9 per cent) and Thailand and Denmark (both 11 per cent). Those with the highest percentages of disgruntled employees are Luxembourg (36 per cent), Italy (30 per cent) and Belgium (27 per cent)."
Something I didn't expect - that Indonesian employees are the least unhappy in the world. As far as I remember, most of my friends who work in Indonesia complain about their workplace. Yes, confirmation bias.

This result also reminds me of a topic discussed in my alumni mailing list some time ago: inferiority complex. It was the first time I heard the term, and I'm still not sure if I understand the meaning correctly. But here's a definition from Wikipedia:
Wikipedia: "a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way."
There are more in it though. But taking the definition literally, one might argue that Indonesians are experiencing inferiority complex. That these people feel OK (or not unhappy) while people from other countries may feel unhappy being in the same workplace. Possible...