Americans tend to think Jesus was happy, extroverted, agreeable, kind and caring. Koreans, on the other hand, associate Jesus more with suffering, sacrifice, and pity, according to a recent analysis in Personality and Social Psychology Connections and a paper published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

Responses to the simple question about Jesus and happiness, whose Biblical depiction is essentially the same worldwide, turn out to involve complex factors, such as shared life histories among groups of people, culture and possibly even genetics. All of these can affect how an individual defines what the optimal personality or self should look like.