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How are you doing today, listeners?
would you say that you're flourishing?
I'm guessing you probably wouldn't unless you have a particularly florid vocabulary.
But researchers are increasingly focused on the idea of human flourishing, a multifaceted measurement that aims to take a holistic look at our collective well -being.
Basically humans who are flourishing aren't just happy, they have lives that are good across the board. And scientists want to get better at measuring that so they can figure out what factors contribute to this desirable state.
Today's guest is Victor Counted, an associate professor of psychology at Regent University in Virginia.
He's also a faculty affiliate at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University and part of the team behind the Global Flourishing Study, a five -year longitudinal survey of more than 200 ,000 individuals from 22 countries.
Thank you so for coming on to chat with us today.
Thank you. I'm really honored to be here.
So tell me about the concept of flourishing.
What does it mean to researchers?
I think it means kind of different things.
And in the past, some people might call it a well -being, some could also say it's a quality of life, but I think it's kind of a construct that have been started for centuries.
But essentially, I think it's about how aspects of a person's life is good, right?
But the flourishing dimension emphasizes the need to think about the context, how aspects of our life are good in relation to our environment, and which I think is very important.
That extension, that definition, allows us to think about flourishing as something that is multidimensional, that involves different things.
Let's say with a Palmer model, positive emotion, engagement, relationship, meaning an accomplishment, you could talk about flourishing from that lens.
But also I think the current framework that we're using, the one from Tyler Vanderbilt, I think it's more comprehensive in the sense that it goes beyond just positive emotions and the idea of relationship, to touch on things like happiness and life satisfaction as a dimension, meaning and purpose as a dimension, character and virtue as a dimension, physical and mental health as a dimension, social relationships as a dimension, but also financial well -being or stability.
And so when you think there are multidimensional aperture, it allows you to think about flourishing at something that encompasses different aspects of life, you know, particularly the idea of meaning and purpose, which really it's not often talked about within the broader definition of flourishing.
You could talk about this dimensions of flourishing.
It's also important to think about what some might even call, let's say, pillars of flourishing or pathways of flourishing.
Currently one of the things we've done is to identify at least four pathways.
One is work. The other is family.
The other is education.
And the last part would be religious communities.
And when we think about this and in each particular culture or context, the pathways to flourishing would differ, you know.
But like, for example, the four pathways that I mentioned are at least ones that we think that are universally, you know, agreed upon And almost in any cultural context, people would identify with this, although they might, you know, look at it in different ways.
And the same thing with the dimensions of human flourishing that I mentioned earlier, that are universally desired and to some degree unending themselves.
So how did you personally get interested in studying human flourishing?
I did my PhD, I looked at adult attachment and health and quality of life's outcomes.
And when I did this, you know, I knew I was always interested in health and quality of life and well -being construct.
And during the time that I was studying this, I kind of got involved and started collaborating with a colleague that was a part of the human flourishing program.
And, you know, I kind of came to the realization that all the things that I've actually been studying, it's actually about human flourishing that's really what drives it.
What are the crux of my work.
And, of course, I started to rethink how I look at things like health and quality of life outcomes.
And, also, I'm also interested in how our environment ultimately shapes us and the psychological processes that kind of undergirds that.
And so I think human flourishing became that very world that captures that.
And you're involved in the global flourishing study.
How does it work? So, essentially, it's a five -year study.
We have almost about over 200 ,000 participants from 22 countries.
And the interesting thing about it, this are nationally representative samples across 22 countries.
In the planets, we're working with Gallup to collect this data.
We've just collected Wave I data.
And the papers for Wave I, it's already out.
And we're currently, with the Wave II data as well, it's also out.
You know, we have a team of about 40 -plus researchers from different disciplines and cultures and institutions.
But mostly, the project is hosted by Baylor University and have the Human exploration Program, a team of scholars with the brightest mind from around the world and just you know doing I think one of the biggest social science research in modern history.
I think it's been wonderful and of course I will be remiss not to mention Tyler Vanderbilt and Byron Johnson for their leadership in the project itself, so it's it's been incredible, yeah.
And were there any surprising findings in your first wave of results?
Yeah, we actually got some really interesting findings.
One of them that really stuck out most would be the fact that young people are struggling, especially when you compare that to the past. That's a U -shaped well -being carved that is often used to talk about well -being and how it develops or evolves over a lifespan, but one of the things that we found was that that is not really what is happening.
We find that young people were not as much flourishing as we had anticipated or hoped.
Of course that could be due to a number of reasons.
Some would say that it's due to COVID -19, the impact of that, some would also say the mental health challenges, even financial insecurity that came as a result of COVID, but also the loss of meaning as well.
It's also a part of that.
And most of the individual papers in the study would point to some of those things.
But I think that overall the disruption of the U -shaped traditional call of well -being, it's one thing to pay attention.
What that simply means now is the fact that the cup itself is flat until about 50 years old.
And that has huge implications for the mental health of young people and policies that shape them.
The other finding was also, you know, it's not necessarily surprising the fact that married people and those that were in relationship, they were flourishing better compared to those that were not.
And of course, you know, we can get a sense of why that is the case because of the fact that they're in supportive relationship, and the social connection that they have in those relationships kind of, you know, helps or drive or sustain their well -being.
The other finding that I think also is interesting to point to would be the area of employment.
Flowsion somehow reflects the status of one's job.
For example, people that are retired scored the highest in the flagship paper that we had, compared to those that were not employed, those are also self -employed, you know, followed suit, compared to those that were also employed by someone else.
And it kind of tells you something, those that have some kind of stability in terms of their career or job stability, tended to kind of feel more secure and happy compared to those that are maybe seeking for a job.
But also interestingly, as well, would be the area of religious service attendance.
Remember, I mentioned that religion is also an important construct when we talk about a flourishing life.
And the idea that it's not necessarily the fact that and when we talk about religion, most people will point to institutional religion, but talk about religion broadly in terms of the psychological aspect of religion.
In fact, some of my colleagues, we talk about this as the four B's that religion helps us with the idea of belonging, right?
When we form social support with people in our congregation that's very important for our well -being and flourishing.
Also the bonding that comes with that, as well.
Whether it's through the spiritual connection with the divine or the sacred, the behaving component, the moral component, the cultivation of character and virtue, through whether it's religious practices or dogma or theological engagement with one's life, and also the believing part, as well.
Believing where religion, in some sense, helps us to form or embrace things like hope or forgiveness, you know, have some kind of setting spiritual convictions that help us to believe that we can do the impossible.
All those things become really fundamental, especially when we look at the results on religious attendance that, for most people that were frequently attending religious services, that they scored higher flourishing compared to those that never did or maybe attended few times in a year but that weekly attendance was really very fundamental to their well -being and interestingly also across all the studies, all the individual papers, I'm talking about almost 100 individual papers is still pointing to the same thing regardless of the culture, regardless of the context even in secular context like
Sweden, that was also very interesting but I do want say this though, because some people who actually attended religious services also reported more pain and suffering, which is kind of interesting as well.
And you know, we could think about why this is might be the case.
In some sense, we know that religious communities would often provide support for people during hard times, and most people are drawn to whether it's a religious community of faith because they are seeking some kind of relief for their suffering or pain, but also, theologically, for most people, the way they conceptualize suffering, it's also very different as well.
Suffering could be something that it's part of an embodiment of one's faith, you know.
So the fact that they are suffering doesn't necessarily mean they're not flourishing, if that makes sense.
So that, you know, kind of interesting.
But beyond this, we also try to look at some of the childhood predictors or experiences that kind of predispose one to a flourishing life when they're adults.
Of course, people that had excellent health at a very young age, we noticed that they were flourishing as adults.
Again, people that were attending religious services at a very young age, at the age of 12, for example, were flourishing as adults.
People that had good relationships with their mother or their father, we saw them flourishing as adults.
But interestingly, though, we noticed those that their parents were divorced were not as much flourishing, you know, at adults.
And the same thing with those that were exposed to abusive relationships, whether it's physical or sexual, we're also really quite struggling to flourish.
And also those that grew up in financially difficult household, families that were struggling financially, we saw them also struggling to flourish later at adults.
Now, what this tells us is that flourishing is a lifespan thing, right?
And so the way we raise our kids, the earlier experiences that we have ultimately become the foundation that kind of shapes what a flourishing life would be, you know, and this have implications in many ways I think.
Yeah. And how were the United States results in the beginning of the flourishing study?
Yeah, I think we found some particularly with most of the Western context we found some sort of interesting findings.
One of the surprising results was the fact that US were not as much flourishing as well as some others, for example, countries like Indonesia, Philippines, most of the northwestern countries were really doing well across all the different dimensions.
But for the US, for example, they were also doing well on financial stability.
But unfortunately, the United States scored lower when it came to meaning and relationship, right?
And this has implication.
And it does in some way tell us that having more money doesn't necessarily mean people are happy or that they're doing well in life.
And hopefully that kind of shapes or challenges the way that we kind of understand what a flourishing life is.
You know, it's not necessarily about success, it's not about money, it's not about material stuff.
At the heart of that it's meaning and relationship.
And also you could think about politically how the political landscape or dynamics within the US might also be contributing to the breakdown of relationship, right.
And also tension around meaning.
It's very terrifying in many ways.
So you've talked about some of the factors that might be out of our control or might be systemic that impact flourishing.
But to wrap us up, what about things that we can control?
What are your takeaways in terms of what our listeners should learn from the flourishing study?
One of the challenge or limitation, rather, from the global flourishing study, I think is the fact that most of the things that we studied, you know, we did it from an ethic lens.
We took an ethic approach, which essentially meant that we were looking at it universally, right.
One of the things that can help us to better understand some of those findings would be the need to kind of take a more emic, context -sensitive approach, where we're looking at individual cultures and societies.
To ask the question around, why are they scoring this on that, what might happening?
What are the underlying contextual factors that might be shaping what is happening in this context?
But most importantly also, I think it's important that we think about the different areas or contexts to which we see that most societies or people are suffering, particularly with young people, particularly around issues of question around populism, meaning, and relationship especially in the Western context, not just the US, but also Europe, even in Australia, the question around meaning and purpose, how can we create initiatives or support research or ideas that can help us accelerate and promote really the pursuit of meaning and purpose, I think that will go a long way in helping people to
flourish and do well.
And really also I think this study is just a starting point.
It's kind of opened it up for more studies to kind of engage some of this ideas and topics.
My hope is that, you know, somehow we can come to the point where we can start to think about what would a flourishing goal look like for this community, for this context, or this particular continental country, right?
And as we start to talk about that it also means that we, it challenges the way that we look at what does flourishing look like for us.
And to understand that it has to be context sensitive, not just that also it has to kind of focus on the values, the things that we value and start from there to kind of make changes and define what really shapes us and make us happy.
Thank you so much for coming on to TAT today.
This has been really interesting.
Thank you so much. That's all for today's episode.
We'll be back with our usual news roundup on Monday.
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