What makes people flourish?
This articleĀ is provided courtesy ofĀ CERM Risk Insights, a content partner of the Operational Excellence Society.
What does it mean to live a good life? For centuries, philosophers, scientists and people of different cultures have tried to answer this question. Each tradition has a different take, but all agree: The good life is more than just feeling good ā itās about becoming whole.
More recently, researchers have focused on the idea of flourishing, not simply as happiness or success, but as a multidimensional state of well-being that involves positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment ā an idea that traces back to Aristotleās concept of āeudaimoniaā but has been redefined within the well-being science literature.
Do people in some countries thrive more than others? What makes the biggest difference in a personās well-being? Are there things people can do to improve their own lives? Understanding these trends over time can help shape policies and programs that improve global human flourishing.
What does the flourishing study focus on?
The Global Flourishing Study is a five-year annual survey of over 200,000 participants from 22 countries, using nationally representative sampling to understand health and well-being. Our team includes more than 40 researchers across different disciplines, cultures and institutions.
With help from Gallup Inc., we asked people about their lives, their happiness, their health, their childhood experiences, and how they feel about their financial situation.
The study looks at six dimensions of a flourishing life:
- Happiness and life satisfaction: how content and fulfilled people feel with their lives.
- Physical and mental health: how healthy people feel, in both body and mind.
- Meaning and purpose: whether people feel their lives are significant and moving in a clear direction.
- Character and virtue: how people act to promote good, even in tough situations.
- Close social relationships: how satisfied people are with their friendships and family ties.
- Financial and material stability: whether people feel secure about their basic needs, including food, housing and money.
We tried to quantify how participants are doing on each of these dimensions using a scale from 0 to 10. In addition to using the Secure Flourish measure from Harvardās Human Flourishing Program, we included additional questions to probe other factors that influence how much someone is flourishing.
For example, we assessed well-being through questions about optimism, peace and balance in life. We measured health by asking about pain, depression and exercise. We measured relationships through questions about trust, loneliness and support.
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Authors
Victor Counted, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he also leads the Christian Flourishing Science Lab as Director. Counted is a Faculty Affiliate of Harvard Universityās Human Flourishing Program and a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion. He has a PhD in Health Psychology from Western Sydney University, Australia, and a second PhD in Psychology of Religion from the University of Groningen, Netherlands.
Byron Johnson is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University and is the founding director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR). Johnson is a faculty affiliate of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, and is co-executive director of the Center for Faith and the Common Good as well as Visiting Distinguished Professor in the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. In 2016, he co-founded the Religious Freedom Institute, based in Washington, DC.
Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Director of the Human Flourishing Program and Co-Director of the Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality at Harvard University. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance, and biostatistics.
