A lot of them are also in places where the climate spends half the year trying to freeze you to death. I've always wondered if that's coincidental.
I could imagine it going a few different ways. Maybe every day when you wake up and have not frozen to death, you already feel accomplished, so start the day with a win. Or maybe there's a certain resilience already in people who would choose to continue to live in such a climate. Or maybe you just don't have much time to care much about your neighbors' negative qualities when there are homes to keep warm.
Maybe you can just afford to complain more about everything else when you don't have the weather as an easy (and unifying) adversary to complain about.
My guess was a dark and horrible "adverse selection" where suicide or emmigration already weeded out the unhappy. Reducing suicide decreases overall happiness - even though it also avoids the damage.
I could imagine it going a few different ways. Maybe every day when you wake up and have not frozen to death, you already feel accomplished, so start the day with a win. Or maybe there's a certain resilience already in people who would choose to continue to live in such a climate. Or maybe you just don't have much time to care much about your neighbors' negative qualities when there are homes to keep warm.
Maybe you can just afford to complain more about everything else when you don't have the weather as an easy (and unifying) adversary to complain about.